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Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff speaks with reporters on Wednesday, November 4, 2009, after the party's caucus meeting on Parliament Hill.Adrian Wyld

Liberals expect to be shut out of four federal by-elections and their rivals are already positioning Monday's results as a rejection of Michael Ignatieff's shaky leadership.

The contests will most likely amount to a confirmation of the status quo, with the Bloc Quebecois hanging on to two ridings in Quebec, New Democrats holding on to another in British Columbia and the Tories reclaiming a Nova Scotia riding that had been a longtime stronghold until Bill Casey, a former Conservative MP, captured it as an independent in 2008.

But all four races are sufficiently tight that they could conceivably produce upset victories for the Conservatives and the NDP.

In many respects, the more interesting battles are over second place, with both the Tories and NDP hoping that strong – if not winning – finishes will give them that most precious of political commodities: momentum.

By contrast, the Liberals don't appear to be factors in any of the races. They are expected to do no better than a distant third.

None of the ridings has ever been prime Liberal turf. But rarely has the once-mighty, self-described natural governing party seemed so thoroughly out of contention.

"If you're the official Opposition, I think you'd be expected to do well in by-elections in the midst of a global economic downturn," Conservative party spokesman Fred DeLorey said Sunday.

"I think it says something about leadership."

Mr. DeLorey said the Tories expect to be shut out themselves, pointing out that by-elections rarely reward the governing party. But that message is almost certainly more an exercise in lowering expectations than a realistic prediction.

The Tories are well-positioned to win one contest and come close in two others. Ditto for the NDP.

For their part, New Democrats are hoping the by-elections will produce a new political dynamic in Quebec in which the NDP are seen as the federalist alternative to the separatist Bloc on the island of Montreal and the Tories are seen as the alternative outside Montreal. Under this scenario, the Liberals would be squeezed out entirely.

"We used to finish behind the Marijuana Party [in Quebec]" NDP Leader Jack Layton noted last week.

"But we're now real players, so much so the Bloc's even attacking us. Holy mackerel. We must be doing something right."

Anne McLellan, former Liberal cabinet minister and co-chair of the party's national election readiness team, acknowledged the Liberal goal in the by-elections is modest: to improve on the meagre share of the vote they won in each riding in 2008 under the leadership of the unpopular Stéphane Dion.

But she said rival parties shouldn't interpret that as throwing in the towel.

"We're in the process of I think rebuilding our party, rebuilding the party finances, the party structure, the people around the leader in his office," she said in an interview.

"There's no point, you know, in gilding the lily. We have work to do and we will do that work. I think the Conservatives and New Democrats can say what they want but they probably underestimate the Liberal party and the people in it if they count us out in terms of the longer term."

The by-elections come at a particularly bad juncture for Mr. Ignatieff, who is in the process of shaking up his inner circle after a rocky couple of months.

Liberal fortunes and Mr. Ignatieff's popularity have plunged since early September, when the leader declared his intention to defeat the minority Conservative government at the earliest opportunity. Mr. Ignatieff has had to back off that threat in the wake of series of missteps that culminated in the spectacular resignation of his Quebec lieutenant, Denis Coderre, who criticized the leader's reliance on a Toronto-centric inner circle.

Of the four ridings up for grabs Monday, the Liberals did best in the east-end Montreal riding of Hochelaga during the 2008 general election, coming a distant second behind the Bloc.

This time, however, it's the NDP's Jean-Claude Rocheleau who's giving the Bloc's Daniel Paille, a former Parti Quebecois cabinet minister, a run for his money. Mr. Layton said Rocheleau is winning the sign war in the riding and the last time he saw that phenomenon – in Outremont during a 2007 by-election –the NDP won.

In Montmagny-L'Islet-Kamouraska-Riviere du Loup, the Tories are running a former local mayor, Bernard Genereux, who has provided surprisingly stiff competition for Bloc contender Nancy Gagnon. The Tories came a relatively respectable second in 2008, 16 percentage points behind the Bloc.

A win this time could signal that the Tories, all but written off in Quebec only six months ago, are back in the game.

B.C.'s New Westminster-Coquitlam is a dog fight to the finish between the NDP's Fin Donnelly, a popular local councillor, and the Tories' Diana Dilworth. The Conservatives held the riding until losing narrowly to the NDP in 2006 and again in 2008.

Layton said B.C.'s unpopular move to harmonize its provincial sales tax with the federal GST has boosted Donnelly's chances. The NDP is the only federal party to unequivocally oppose harmonization.

In Nova Scotia's Cumberland-Colchester-Musquodoboit Valley, Mr. Casey represented the riding as a Tory for 10 years before being punted from the government caucus in 2007 for publicly criticizing the budget. Mr. Casey won as an independent in 2008, scooping up a whopping 69 per cent of the vote.

With Casey no longer in the picture, Tory candidate Scott Armstrong is hoping most Mr. Casey supporters return to the Conservative fold. New Democrat Mark Austin, however, is giving him a run for his money, bolstered by the popularity of the recently elected NDP provincial government.

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