Harper has appeared as a more measured candidate, while the Liberals have opted for billion dollar programs.

(Angus Reid Global Scan) Angus Reid - There's a lot of speculation early in the current Canadian election campaign that on voting day things will look pretty much like they did after the last election: a Liberal minority. Looking at the polls (and there's more than one per day), it's hard not to escape this conclusion. The Liberal Ontario Fortress seems impenetrable—in the last ten days or so, four out of five respected polling companies have put the Liberals at over 40 per cent in Ontario, with an overall lead ranging from twenty points (Nick Nanos' SES) to ten points (Allan Gregg's Strategic Counsel).

The Ipsos polling folks are the exception—they see a much tighter race with the Liberals in the mid-thirties and the gap between them and the Conservatives at only two or three points (a tie within their advertised margin of error). If the Ipsos trend line holds, then Martin and Company are in trouble and we'll almost certainly see the end of the Liberal's hold on the Federal government.

In some respects it's probably too soon to project what's going to happen on Jan. 23, but there are several reasons for believing that this campaign has a dynamic significantly different than the last and could produce a result closer to that projected by Ipsos than their polling colleagues. The biggest difference is that this campaign (unlike the last) is turning into a clash of promises and goodies for voters (it's Christmas time after all) than a clash over ideology. And here Stephen Harper and the Conservatives seem to be doing a better job dropping little morsels on the snow that voters may find appealing.

It's not that the Liberals don't have promises, but their pitch comes in the form of grand gestures communicated in terms of billion dollar programs. Child care is a case in point. The Liberal promise is classic "Ottawa speak" involving a multi-billion dollar program over ten years with all of the trimmings that Canadian's have come to expect (consultation with the provinces, government approved day-care spaces, a multi-year implementation schedule, etc.). This may be a great program, but it's political (read: vote-getting) potential is limited because the country is tired of these kinds of promises. And, according to a survey I did several years ago, about two thirds of the electorate doesn't even know how much money a billion dollars actually represents. So in child care, as in health care, grand program pronouncements simply serve to remind voters of the "inside the beltway" mentality that defines the Martin government.

Harper's Conservatives have a campaign aimed at spreading bite sized and easily digested promises across the land. On the GST, child care, hospital waiting times, and small business taxes, the Conservatives are doing a much better job defining themselves to the electorate. With the exception of his early promise to hold a free vote on same-sex marriage, Harper has steered away from ideological rhetoric and appears intent on a campaign dedicated to easily comprehended, and measured, promises which, regardless of their policy correctness, define him as a far safer and measured candidate than was the case in the last election.

The Liberals are going to have to start countering this strategy pretty soon, or they could find their numbers slipping to the disastrous levels already reported by Darrell Bricker and his friends at Ipsos. This may turn out to be the campaign where victory came not through "showing the beef" á-la-Walter Mondale in the 1984 U.S. Democratic primaries, but instead through arranging a neat path of Timbits in the snow all the way to the Conservative box on the ballot. And Canadian voters may be so mesmerized by what lies along the path that they stop focusing on the demeanour of the guy placing them at their feet.

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