OTTAWA: Canada’s New Democratic Party (NDP), once leading in the race to replace the Conservatives in Oct. 19 polls, could come in third nationally and lose one-third of its seats in its Quebec stronghold, a projection published on Friday showed.

A Leger poll in the Journal de Montreal shows the party trailing the Conservatives and Liberals nationally by four and six points respectively. But it is the numbers in the French-speaking province of Quebec that are the most striking. There it showed the NDP only at 28 percent, just four points ahead of the Liberal Party, its main rival on the left, and the separatist Bloc Quebecois; and seven points ahead of the Conservatives of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

A projection by political scientist Pierre Martin for the Journal de Montreal showed the NDP taking only 37 of the 78 Quebec seats in the House of Commons, down from the 54 it currently has.

It was bad news for NDP leader Thomas Mulcair as he prepared for the final debate of the campaign, a French-language encounter on Friday night in Quebec which was bound to feature prominently the question of whether Muslim women should be allowed to veil their faces fully during citizenship ceremonies.

Mulcair has come under fire, especially in Quebec, for taking the position that that would be acceptable as long as she had lifted the veil, ahead of time for identification purposes.