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There will be 338 seats now and the reallocation is as follows: Quebec will get another three seats, Alberta another six, B.C. another six and Ontario another 15. The rest will stay the same.

Last time, Harper won a majority with 166 seats with 39 per cent of the vote. This time, he needs to win only four more seats or 170 and of the 30 new seats, he has a good chance of getting most of them or more than enough to compensate for any he may lose, in Atlantic Canada and Quebec.

Clearly, Alberta will deliver again. The recent NDP victory was a massive Tory protest vote, a one-time event and not contagious.

Harper’s opponents are not CEO material

British Columbia is trickier. But the six new seats are mostly due to the influx of well-heeled prairie residents to the province’s interior and islands. And many are Harper fans. This may help compensate for close calls elsewhere.

Quebec will be a fray, and he may lose one or two seats from his small total. But three parties will divide the rest – NDP, Liberal and the Bloc Quebecois under its reconstituted leader Gilles Duceppe.

Finally, there’s Ontario or, more accurately, area codes 905, 519 and 705 that are the suburban and rural regions with conservative inclinations. In the last election, Harper won 73 Ontario seats and insiders say this time about 85 are promising. Even if there are no gains, he can form a minority government with only 155 seats.

He also has winning conditions. What helps a seasoned CEO like Harper is economic turmoil and uncertainty worldwide in Asia and Europe. By comparison, Canada looks good, thanks to “steady eddy” at the helm of our ship of state.