Much will depend on whether Mr Ignatieff cures his current bout of foot-in-mouth disease.
ECONOMIST: An intellectual struggles to adapt to a political campaign
In fact, that looks possible provided Mr Ignatieff ends up with more seats than Mr Layton.
Michael Ignatieff, the Liberal leader, miscalculated in threatening (but failing) to bring the government down.
They proved more susceptible to relentless Conservative ads portraying Mr Ignatieff as an elitist.
Mr Ignatieff tacked to the left, seeking to match the NDP's promises of federal largesse.
It is soon clear that Mr Ignatieff is not greatly interested in evidence or even seriously in prescription.
Mr Ignatieff's writing, though taut in reportage, sags into the cloudier sort of lit-crit talk when he turns analytical.
Even so, Mr Ignatieff's campaign has garnered him the support of almost 30% of the delegates to the leadership convention.
ECONOMIST: An intellectual struggles to adapt to a political campaign
His long absence from Canada lays Mr Ignatieff open to the charge of being out of touch with public sentiment.
ECONOMIST: An intellectual struggles to adapt to a political campaign
John Manley, a former Liberal cabinet minister and once a leadership contender, says Mr Ignatieff made two mistakes in his comments.
ECONOMIST: An intellectual struggles to adapt to a political campaign
Mr Ignatieff lived outside Canada almost continuously from 1978 to 2005, when he returned to stand for parliament in last January's general election.
ECONOMIST: An intellectual struggles to adapt to a political campaign
But it is from families and traditions that people learn love and charity, the foundations of the humanism that Mr Ignatieff erratically extols.
Yet Mr Ignatieff wants to draw conclusions that will impress foreign ministers as well as cultural pundits, and the results can, alas, be comical.
Mr Ignatieff's proposal to give Quebec special status boosted his fortunes there but fell flat with Canadians elsewhere, who are tired of decades of constitutional wrangling.
ECONOMIST: An intellectual struggles to adapt to a political campaign
Mr Ignatieff did not help himself by seeming to try to have it both ways on whether the Liberals might forge a post-electoral coalition with the NDP.
But the leader of the main opposition Liberal party, the author and historian Michael Ignatieff, ruled out forming a coalition with either of the two smaller opposition parties.
Not only did their leader, Michael Ignatieff, fail to win his seat, but they were outflanked to their left by the New Democrats (NDP), a niche party that now becomes the official opposition.
Mr Ignatieff triggered the election by joining other opposition parties to bring down the government over its refusal to divulge how it arrived at implausibly low estimates of the cost of controversial new prisons and jet fighters.
Mr Ignatieff, a former academic, unwisely triggered an election for which his party was ill-prepared by choosing to bring down the government over its contempt of parliament in concealing the true cost of new fighter jets and prisons.
The NDP is also profiting from the travails of Michael Ignatieff, the Liberal leader, who entered politics in 2006 after spending most of the three previous decades working as a journalist and academic in Britain and the United States.
Mr Ignatieff still has to learn.
ECONOMIST: An intellectual struggles to adapt to a political campaign
Many like Mr Ignatieff are ready to lend support to the idea of an American empire, moved by a desire to bring people living in failed states out of their disorder and misery, and believing that only America can run such an empire.
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