[Sylvanfan]

The thing is that Conservatives have more of a tendency to hold their nose and still go vote for their party, even if they don't like some of the rhetoric, or agree with it. For whatever reason, they still show up and vote.

Whereas that doesn't happen on the left with 4 different parties parties on our system who typically get seats in the house of Commons. If the Conservatives were to revert back to the 90's with an "Extreme Right" reform party, and a more moderate Conservative party they know full well their upside is like 25% of the vote and maybe 65 seats for the reform style party. Recent polling by Angus Reid seems to suggest that Conservative support which was around 43% is now around 40%. It's not enough to be able to win against a more united left, let alone for any faction to break away and go solo.

From what I've been able to read, a lot of the support that Mark Carney would potentially gain as Liberal Leader to close the gap on the Conservatives is actually coming from the NDP. Which maybe suggests the Liberals should be looking to go more extreme to the left to try and entice more NDP support into their party. None of their Leadership candidates is particularly proficient in French. In the past when this happens, a lot of Liberal support in Quebec is likley to go BQ, so to get votes outside of Quebec against the Conservatives, drawing in more NDP or Green support might be the way.