The 2015 federal election will require political parties to work harder than ever to capture the attention of the electorate. This story is part of Adam Radwanski's new assignment looking at how the party machines across the country are preparing.

Maybe Stephen Harper should be careful what he wishes for.

For a long time, his Conservatives have all but openly cheered for the New Democrats to get and keep traction with voters. Often that has been about centre-left vote-splitting, but more than that, the Tories have wanted them to permanently supplant the Liberals as their primary opponents.

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Now, amid what seems to be an NDP surge, the Tories have reason to question their underlying assumption that the New Democrats would be much easier to beat.

The operating theory has been that whereas the Liberals were long able to successfully straddle the middle of the political spectrum, the New Democrats' appeal could never be as broad. While they might eventually win the occasional election, their leftism would be feared by enough of the electorate that the Conservatives would more often than not be able to rally enough voters behind themselves to win – which is to some extent what happened in the final days of the last federal campaign.

But four months away from the first election since its surprising (and to some eyes fluky) ascent to Official Opposition, the NDP doesn't seem to be scaring very many people. In fact, if they were in a head-to-head battle with the Conservatives, there's some reason to believe that it's the New Democrats who'd be positioned to have the rallying behind them.

What should be alarming to the Conservatives about recent polls is not that the NDP is slightly ahead of them in popular support. It's that the New Democrats have a big advantage in the number of voters willing to consider voting for them.

In an Angus Reid survey released this week, conducted with an online panel of more than 6,000 people between May 26 and June 7, the NDP was identified as the first choice of 36 per cent of likely voters and the second choice of another 23 per cent – suggesting nearly six in 10 voters are at least willing to consider it. That's a much bigger potential reach than for the Conservatives, who had 33 per cent first-choice support but only 7 per cent second-choice. (There also appears to be more openness toward the NDP than toward the Liberals, who were at 23 per cent first choice and 21 per cent second choice.)

The poll's findings were fairly consistent across the country – including battleground Ontario, which the NDP has generally struggled to break into. There, it showed the Conservatives with 36 per cent to the NDP's 34 per cent in first-choice support, but the NDP with 28 per cent second-choice support next to just 6 per cent for the Tories. And among Liberal supporters across the country – a group that presumably includes moderates the Conservatives would expect to run screaming from the NDP – 52 per cent identified Mr. Mulcair's party as their next best option, versus just 16 per cent who went with Mr. Harper's.

Other surveys have offered similar (if slightly less dramatic) findings. A poll released this week by Nanos Research found that 52 per cent of respondents would consider voting NDP, next to 46 per cent for the Liberals and just 39 per cent for the Conservatives. A recent one by Abacus Data found 56 per cent open to voting for the NDP, 51 per cent for the Liberals and 45 per cent for the Conservatives.

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The science of all this is imperfect, and saying you could conceivably vote for a party is a long way from actually doing it. But it makes some sense that even people who previously would have been horrified by the prospect of an NDP government are no longer as put off by the old stigmas.

Mr. Mulcair is not everyone's cup of tea, but he's far from a wild-eyed socialist. Rather than the weekly embarrassments many expected when it elected a cast of political neophytes in 2011, the NDP has been consistently professional since then. This spring's stunning Alberta election signalled the rest of the country that voting NDP is no longer unacceptable much of anywhere. And as the electorate seemingly becomes less tribal in general, old labels and stigmas just don't mean that much.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives' long-term aim of establishing themselves as the default option for anyone not on the left has often seemed at odds with short-term efforts to win elections largely by mobilizing their core supporters with an us-against-the-world mentality. So it's not entirely surprising if they find themselves with a much smaller universe than an NDP in decent favour with everyone from urban leftists to western populists to Quebec soft nationalists, and at least starting to get taken seriously by suburbanites.

For now, of course, it's just a snapshot in time. Flubs like the one Mr. Mulcair had in an interview broadcast on Wednesday, when he couldn't correctly state the current level of corporate tax rates he wants to raise, could bring back old fears. The NDP could very well still finish third in this fall's election. If it forms government, it will no doubt do things that turn off some of the people currently willing to consider it.

But we're learning, at least, what is possible for the NDP. It's probably a little more than Mr. Harper was banking on.