By the end of the 2006 federal election campaign that first brought the Conservative Party of Canada and Stephen Harper to power, a young woman who worked on the Conservative leader’s tour was so exhausted she had to be hospitalized. Eight weeks of gruelling 18-hour work days, junk food, trying to sleep on planes and buses, and unrelenting stress will do that to any human. Now try to imagine doing it for 11 weeks and mark my words, the 2015 Canadian federal election campaign is not a sprint but an endurance race, and the winner will be the leader and the campaign team that staggers across the finish line on October 19 before succumbing to complete mental and physical exhaustion.

Those are the people who should be complaining about this marathon, not the armchair critics who moaned on about the Conservatives’ diabolical scheme to outspend their rivals and marginalize third-party advertisers with the longest campaign in more than a century. More evidence of the Harperists’ nefarious conspiracy to subvert Canadian democracy, they said. Oh please. If anything, a 78-day campaign featuring as many as five nationally televised leaders’ debates and daily policy announcements on every imaginable issue is a feast of democracy, a riot of enfranchisement, an orgy of political engagement. Even the most determinedly apathetic voter will not be able to escape it, and it is a safe bet that election turnout will not only increase, but more voters will know more than they’ve ever known about the parties and their platforms when they mark their ballot. And that is a good thing.

In our infotainment-saturated world, democracy competes for attention with celebrities, sports, weather, stupid cat videos, ISIS beheadings, and the Ashley Madison hack. Donald Trump understands this, and he has climbed into the lead of the Republican presidential nomination contest by being louder and more outrageous than anyone else in the field. Canada’s aspiring political leaders have been milquetoasts by comparison in the first month of the 2015 campaign, but the promises, insults, accusations and fabrications are all going to get bigger and noisier from here on out. In other words, the real show begins now, and with the three main parties currently running neck and neck, it promises to the most exciting, interesting and entertaining Canadian election in years.

The fall edition of C2C Journal is going to cover Campaign ’15 with a dozen feature articles that aim to cut through the noise and zero in on the issues and strategies that will shape the outcome. If you’re betting on the election, you can gain an edge on fellow punters from the political intelligence that is being gathered by the veteran journalists and politicos from across Canada who are contributing to this edition. To ensure our coverage is as current as possible, we have structured the deadlines and rollout schedule to provide up-to-date articles twice a week over the next six weeks.

We begin today with Framing the Ballot, a stage-setter by long time Sun Media editor Paul Stanway that examines the positioning narratives the parties have developed over the last year or so and their success – or failure – in getting their messages out in the first month of the campaign. Superficially, the choice on October 19 will be between “Real Change”, “Ready for Change”, or “Proven Leadership”. Beneath that, each party has a short list of key message objectives: the Liberals want to be branded as champions of the middle class; the NDP as a fresh approach to activist government; and the Conservatives as protectors of the economy and national security. Deeper still are the micro-targeted platforms with a chicken for every pot, from subsidized daycare to gouging the rich to tax credits for home renovations.

Swirling around all those tightly scripted narratives and improbably costed promises are all the stories the parties can’t control – the Duffy trial, candidate bozo eruptions, global financial market gyrations. These are the true tests of campaigns, and victory often goes to the nimblest.

In the weeks ahead C2C’s election edition will also provide a detailed look at the competition for ethnic votes – a story that has been largely overlooked by most pollsters and pundits – and an assessment of the Air War, where television advertising and social media bombardment could be unusually influential in a long campaign. We’ll also look at the importance of messy, oppositional ideology in modern politics and campaigns, contrasting it with the utopian promise of non-partisan technocracy.

Then, as the race enters the home stretch, we will provide detailed analyses of the pre-vote electoral landscape in each of Canada’s six regions. Writers based in each region are currently tracking polls, monitoring swing ridings and separating reality from spin in conversations with campaign insiders. If you read all these pieces we can’t guarantee you’ll win the election night pool but we’re certain you’ll do better than the oft-flummoxed pollsters.

Finally, we’ll wrap the Fall 2015 edition of C2C Journal with a campaign post-mortem by the ever erudite Colby Cosh. Generally he prefers his election entrails stirred, not shaken, but depending what happens October 19, Canada may emerge from the 2015 federal election very shaken indeed.

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Paul Bunner is the editor of C2C Journal and has participated in numerous federal, provincial and municipal elections as a journalist or campaign worker.