Consistency Without Much Substance: Day 4

It might be premature to dub this "the coalition election" but with over 10% of the campaign over with now (yes, these things happen fast!), the opposition parties that brought down the government last week have failed so far to change the page from talk of a coalition, and have in fact encouraged it in the cases of Gilles Duceppe and Jack Layton. How attacking Conservative leader and Prime Minister Harper for an alleged coalition deal almost a decade ago will help their causes remains to be seen; the times have changed so radically that Harper is on the offering end of "secret agenda" theories, not the receiving end.

The four party leaders spent the day making modest, routine stops (Harper in Saskatchewan/Winnipeg; Ignatieff in Oakville; Layton in Brantford; Duceppe in Montréal) while most of the headlines still focused on coalition talk. Harper made a stop late in the day to do another piano performance in Winnipeg (this time with Youtube star Maria Aragon). Very little of the day focused on policy development: the Tories had to defend against an ex-staffer campaigning for them in Edmonton but who also is under investigation by the RCMP; the Liberals were discovered for a typo in how their $1000/yr scholarship could actually give Quebec students $500/yr and Layton promised to freeze credit rates for families. Overall, very dull and very boring which, again, works to the Conservatives' favour.

At this stage, the other parties will be banking on the debates becoming a game changer ala 1984 (the Greens, it was announced today, won't be participating), or they will have to change the discourse on the campaign trail. Time to get cracking guys!

Day 4 Winner: The Conservatives