5 takeaways from where party leaders travelled on the campaign trail

If you want to have a sense of the federal parties' campaign strategies, it helps to follow the leader.

An individual announcement in one riding might not indicate much, but taking a wider view reveals patterns in a party's plan of attack.

CBC News analyzed the whereabouts of the main party leaders and every event they held.

On the eve of Monday's vote, here are five things that stood out about the leaders' tours.

The NDP was eventually forced to flip from an offensive campaign, a strategy in which the party was looking to add seats, to a defensive one — and the change was stark.

In the first three weeks of the campaign, 78 per cent of NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh's visits were to non-NDP-held ridings — the highest percentage among the four main party leaders. 

But after the debates, the party entered save-the-furniture mode. It couldn't shake polling that suggested the party was on the verge of losing official status, which requires 12 seats.

Sixty-one per cent of Singh's visits in the campaign's final stretch were to ridings held by the NDP.

Tari Ajadi, an assistant political science professor at McGill University, argues the New Democrats had their chance to make inroads before the election was called.

He said the NDP should have moved to a defensive posture earlier in the campaign, once its struggle to pick up support was becoming clear.

The Conservatives need Liberal ridings in order to have any shot at forming government, and Pierre Poilievre's itinerary bears this out.

More than three-quarters of Poilievre's stops have been to ridings the Conservatives would like to carry.

Of those visits, 80 per cent were trips to Liberal-held seats.

"For them to be able to form government, they need to be aggressive and they need to win seats in places like the GTA. They need to win seats in Quebec. They need to win seats in Atlantic Canada," Ajadi said.