An explanation for our American friends: The Liberals are a party that can be described as vaguely "liberal"-middle of the road in tone (if not content)...vaguely like the Democrats. The Conservatives are a party that is roughly comparable to the Republicans and they appeal to the same mindset as the Republicans. The NDP is a leftist socialist party with the support of usually 14-20 % of Canadians at any given time. You have no real parallel to the NDP in the USA...a country where socialists are seen as pretty much beyond the pale. ;-)

So a typically American conservative viewpoint accounts for about 32% of our Ontario public at the moment, while 42% are middle-of-the-road liberal in your terms, and 17% are considerably to the left of that. If we had ONLY the Democrats and Republicans here to vote for, the Democrats would get about 2/3 of the vote, normally speaking.

That tells you the difference between American and Canadian politics in a nutshell. The way the Conservatives can normally win elections here (when they do) is by splitting the considerably larger liberal constituency out there between the Liberals and the NDP. They can also win, of course, if the Liberals have been in long enough to really create some major hostility on the part of the public. Any party in power anywhere can eventually wear out its welcome if it just tries hard enough.