Saskatchewan and British Columbia have already seen NDP leader Jack Layton and Conservative leader Stephen Harper twice so far in this election campaign and for good reason. The NDP, shut out in Saskatchewan in 2004 despite receiving roughly the same number of votes overall in that province as it did prior to 2004, thinks it can win some seats back in that province. (The Conservatives made almost a clean sweep of Saskatchewan, winning 13 of 14 seats there. Finance Minister Ralph Goodale is the only non-Conservative MP from that province right now.) Meanwhile in B.C., the NDP placed a close second in a handful of ridings and party strategists are hopeful of stealing a few.

In many of those close ridings in both B.C. and Saskatchewan, it was a Conservative candidate who narrowly edged out the NDP candidate. Here's a quick table of the ridings where the NDP candidate finished second in 2004 by less than a 1,000 votes.

Riding	Prov.	Winner	Party	Winner's Vote pct.	Votes by which the NDP lost
Western Arctic	NW	Ethel Blondin-Andrew	LIB	39.5	53
New Westminster-Coquitlam	BC	Paul Forseth	CON	32.9	113
Palliser	SK	Dave Batters	CON	35.9	124
Saskatoon-Humboldt	SK	Brad Trost	CON	26.8	417
Oshawa	ON	Colin Carrie	CON	33.2	463
Vancouver Island North	BC	John Duncan	CON	35.4	483
British Columbia Southern Interior	BC	Jim Gouk	CON	36.6	680
Trinity-Spadina	ON	Tony Ianno	LIB	43.6	805
Regina Qu'Appelle	SK	Andrew Scheer	CON	35.8	861
Hamilton East-Stoney Creek	ON	Tony Valeri	LIB	37.7	927
Kenora	ON	Roger Valley	LIB	36.2	986
Hamilton Mountain	ON	Beth Phinney	LIB	34.8	996