The weekend before last year's Oct. 19 election, before voting began, all three parties believed they knew what the results would be. They had the latest public opinion polls plus their own internal surveys. The Liberals understood that a last-minute movement of voters to them from the NDP plus the enthusiasm of younger voters for Justin Trudeau meant a majority was theirs. The Conservatives realized their government was as dead as Monty Python's parrot -- kaput, defunct. And the NDP leadership believed it was going to win easily, at least in Quebec.
Both Tom Mulcair and his team revelled in this expectation. The leader waxed excitedly about the huge turnout for his meetings in Quebec, surely presaging the NDP's second successive sweep of the province. A senior adviser assured anguished New Democrats that 50 Quebec seats were in the bag. Since virtually every public poll agreed the NDP was by then chopped liver, partisans listened but more plausibly believed the campaign was now totally delusional.
