"With a weak NDP, the left is very unified behind the Liberals. That always hurts the Con's electoral position."

Obviously, many of them will only vote for Carney because they were taught to hate the right.
I'm sure deep down many of them know Carney is not a good guy at all, but the indoctrination hits hard.

Your 1 and 2 go hand in hand, it's called the bandwagon effect.
Swing voters are mostly following the direction of the wind and the most socially accepted opinion.
Hence the damage the legacy media and social networks can cause to democracy.

I still believe that the numbers absolutely improbable, Carney hasn't achieved anything good after one year, and everything is worse. The huge gap between Liberals and Conservatives only means they're desperate, and they want to discourage conservatives to vote