Most NDP members have by now received their leadership voting packages in the mail.

My voting package was sent to my old mailing address, so I still haven't been able to see the return card lay-out or register my voter ID PIN number yet, but this has given me some extra time to consider how the candidates stack up in some categories of personal importance.

I have spent time during the last month, volunteering with several of the different leadership campaigns on-going here in Quebec and it has become clear that the supporters of the different leadership candidates have far more in common than anything that would keep them apart after the selection of a new NDP leader.

To counteract the record low 58.8% voter turnout in the 2008 federal election, there was an unprecedented push to engage voters this past election.

With only 37% of 18 to 24 year-olds casting a ballot in 2008, many of the ‘get out the vote' efforts in 2011 were focused on young voters: Rick Mercer rants, vote mobs and vote socials, ShitHarperDid. It looked as if things might be different this time around.

Here's a couple of curious facts from our last federal election three years ago:

First: Compared to the 2006 election before that, the Harper Conservatives won 170,000 fewer votes, the NDP with Jack Layton got 75,000 fewer votes and the Liberals, then led by Stephane Dion, got 700,000 fewer votes.

Everyone and their Aunty Gladys agree that Mr. Dion personally kept that massive horde of Liberals hiding at home on Election Day, 2008. So what happened to a lot of Conservative and NDP voters? No one seems to know. What -- who? -- turned them off? And how do they get turned back on?