Right now, I’m not paying too much attention to the polls that show Mr. Trudeau’s Liberals more or less tied with the Conservatives under Andrew Scheer. Aside from the 2015 experience, when Mr. Trudeau started out in third place, the popular vote is not an ideal measurement. Remember that Mr. Trudeau’s majority in the House of Commons was produced by capturing just under 40 percent of the popular vote.

[Also: New Video Surfaces Showing Trudeau in Blackface, Compounding Scandal]

Space in this letter doesn’t permit getting into the near perpetual debate over Canada’s winner-take-all voting system, or Mr. Trudeau’s broken promise to change it. But that system does mean that power usually falls to the party that comes closest to that 40 percent mark in popular support.

So while the leaders of all major parties proclaim themselves as the champions of ordinary Canadians, or as the person best placed to stand up for the middle class, however that’s defined, their campaign strategies will also likely involve zeroing in on specific groups with narrow interests whose votes will be key to hitting that mark.

Who those people are and how the leaders will appeal to them will be one of the many things Dan and I will be reporting on between now and Oct. 21. We’ll also be looking into the campaign performances that do or don’t come to dominate the campaign. Our aim is to do so in-depth, so we won’t be part of the traveling campaign circuses sending daily reports while having our minds numbed by the endless loop of stump speeches.