THE hitherto sleepy campaign for Canada's general election on May 2nd was jolted awake over the Easter weekend by a surprising surge by the New Democratic Party (NDP), a leftish amalgam of trade unionists and farmers. The NDP, which held only 36 of the 308 seats in the House of Commons when it was dissolved in March, was leading in French-speaking Quebec (which provides almost a quarter of the total seats) and has overhauled the Liberals in some national opinion polls to become the main challenger to the ruling Conservatives (see chart).

So is Canada about to go socialist? Although the Canadian dollar wobbled this week, the answer is almost certainly not. Indeed, by splitting the centre-left vote more evenly, the NDP's rise—if sustained—may provide Stephen Harper, the Conservative leader, with the parliamentary majority that has eluded him ever since he became prime minister in 2006. In the ensuing years Canadian politics has become an unusually shrill, partisan and intransigent affair. Frequent elections—this is the fourth since 2004—have seen falling voter turnout, while polls show that public trust in politicians is also declining.

This cynicism seems to have helped Jack Layton, the NDP leader. He is seen as the cheerful underdog, who, despite suffering from prostate cancer and hip problems that require he walk with a cane, appears relaxed and smiling. Although based in Toronto, he grew up near Montreal. In colloquial French he claims that “winds of change” are sweeping his native province. His message of higher corporate taxes, more social spending, green measures, and an early withdrawal of Canadian troops from Afghanistan goes down well in Quebec, a traditionally pacifist, big-government kind of place. Mr Layton seems to be successfully wooing disillusioned supporters of the separatist Bloc Québécois.

The NDP is also profiting from the travails of Michael Ignatieff, the Liberal leader, who entered politics in 2006 after spending most of the three previous decades working as a journalist and academic in Britain and the United States. Although his campaign appearances have become more assured, he has failed to shake off the gibes of Conservative attack ads that he is an elitist from Harvard who is “just visiting” Canada in the hope of gaining power. Mr Ignatieff did not help himself by seeming to try to have it both ways on whether the Liberals might forge a post-electoral coalition with the NDP. In fact, that looks possible provided Mr Ignatieff ends up with more seats than Mr Layton.

Mr Ignatieff triggered the election by joining other opposition parties to bring down the government over its refusal to divulge how it arrived at implausibly low estimates of the cost of controversial new prisons and jet fighters. He seems frustrated that Canadians have not warmed to his attacks on Mr Harper for violating democratic principles. The prime minister shut down parliament in 2008 to avoid losing a vote of confidence, and withheld information from parliament on defence spending and the treatment of Afghan detainees by Canadian soldiers.

The biggest problem for the Liberals, a centrist, big-tent party, is that Canadian politics has become less European and consensual and more American and ideological. Mr Harper has been the main cause and beneficiary of that process. After five years, he has earned Canadians' respect if not their love. He is an astute political tactician: he is the longest-serving prime minister of a minority government in Canadian history. But he comes over as a cold control-freak. A headline on the website of the Globe and Mail, a Liberal-leaning paper, summed up popular sentiment when it described the prime minister as “nasty, brutish—and competent”.

Mr Harper's campaign pitch is that he needs a parliamentary majority in order to sustain the country's recovery from recession. His message of low taxes, small government and tougher treatment of criminals has won him support everywhere except Quebec. In the past two elections the opposition successfully aroused fears that if Mr Harper won a majority he would subject a tolerant country to socially conservative policies—banning abortion and gay marriage and introducing capital punishment. With Mr Harper now a more familiar figure, that may not work this time.

“This cycle of election after election, minority after minority, is beginning to put some of the country's interests in serious jeopardy,” Mr Harper warned in a debate among the party leaders, though he did not say what interests were at stake.

His problem is that he has no potential coalition partner. His Conservatives are further to the right than the former Progressive Conservative Party, which governed Canada on and off until its annihilation in 1993 and which was barely distinguishable from the Liberals.

Provided Mr Harper increases the 143 seats and 37.7% the Conservatives won in 2008, his hold on his job looks secure. Fall short, and the era in which majority single-party governments were the Canadian norm will unarguably have ended.

Until 1988, the two main parties shared more than 80% of the vote between them. In 2008 they managed slightly less than two-thirds. The choice facing Canadians may be between much more of Mr Harper, or the arrival of coalition politics from across the Atlantic.