The shaky deal with the NDP that had — sort of — allowed Justin Trudeau's Liberal government to act like a majority finally fell apart last week.
What happens now?
A vote-by-vote survival mode for the government, is an option, though one that involves a semi-permanent state of crisis.
A deal with the Bloc? The math works, but that may be the only thing that works about the idea.
"The trick for the Liberals," Globe and Mail columnist Campbell Clark wrote recently, "is to defuse, delay and, in the end, try to pick the day of their own defeat."
What may save the government, for now — for now — is that only one major party really seems to want an election.
Which one? Well, an online poll this week shows pretty clearly:
People over 60, people with university degrees, people in higher income brackets and women were less enthusiastic about an early election:
In general, support for an early election correlates with positions on the right (which may or may not be positions the Conservatives themselves have adopted)
Interestingly, people with tattoos are more likely to support an early election, a Conservative-associated position. As we saw last week, tattoos correlate with a libertarian set of positions generally, which can (often) sit comfortably with the more libertarian side of the Conservative coalition as it appears at the moment.
Dog people are most in favour of an early election, and cat people are most opposed: