The key to the next election for the Liberal Party is obvious: Michael Ignatieff needs to up his game.

Short of sending a singing telegram to Ottawa, Canadians could hardly have expressed their opinion more plainly over the past five years: They don't like Stephen Harper. They never have. They never will.

How many people do you know who say they'd love to vote for someone else, if only they could find someone else? People who aren't already dyed-in-the-wool Conservatives? The answer is probably somewhere between "everyone I know" and "everyone I know except that guy who hangs around at the dump looking for metal."

Of course, the prime minister has his fans. They're the very same supporters he had when he started, which is telling. Remarkably, Harper has used his time in office to grow his pool of support not one squidge. He has always commanded the enthusiasm of roughly one-third of voters, a level he continues to command today.

When you think of the resources available to him and the resources he's expended (according to the auditor general, those Economic Action Plan ads cost roughly $17 quintillion, and you couldn't have a dirty thought without seeing one of them), it's a remarkable declaration of failure.

His numbers simply don't move. They're stubbornly stuck at somewhere between 30 and 35 per cent. Based on history, he's actually the least successful electoral performer of a united Conservative party in decades (with an obvious exception granted to Kim Campbell).

Robert Stanfield? Joe Clark? Brian Mulroney? They're all rock stars compared to this guy.

We measure Harper against the standard set by leaders during the divided Conservative movement in the 1990s. That's not the real yardstick. As the leader of a united Conservative Party, Harper is the weakest sister presented to the Canadian electorate for generations. In losing campaigns, he has taken his party lower than the historical standard. In winning campaigns he has fallen significantly short of their highs.

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff drinks beer from a tasting glass following a tour of the Granville Island Brewery in Vancouver in August during his cross-country summer tour. (Darryl Dyck/Canadian Press)He still manages to win for two reasons.

First, the Bloc Québécois takes 40 to 50 seats off the board, creating the conditions for perpetual minorities.

Second, the Liberals haven't capitalized on his weaknesses. Harper stands as a Douglas fir, only if he's left to grow in a meadow of saplings. From 2006 to 2008, it was the well-meaning but hopelessly unelectable prospect of Stéphane Dion. Since then, it's been a too-often-disappointing turn from the far-more-talented Ignatieff. Viewed through this lens, Harper's success is less a cause for Conservative celebration than Liberal lament.

Michael Ignatieff occasionally confronts this challenge. A year ago, he cleaned house and publicly permitted that he needed to "do better." This summer saw the Liberal Express ferry him across the country in an admitted effort to improve his connect-with-regular-people skills — a humbling acknowledgment coming from an elected leader.

By Labour Day, he was proclaiming victory. According to Ignatieff himself, much of his caucus and the occasional travelling press gallery scribe, the Liberal leader was transformed into a retail politician of menacing effect. He's more at ease, wears ball caps and even dances.

No doubt, this effort has improved the leader's self-confidence and rallied the spirit of the party's faithful. But according to polls, it has not yet registered in a serious way with Canadians at large. Perhaps that will change. But those composing the Liberal Party's electoral strategy would be better served to assume it will not and plan accordingly.

In politics, there is an unyielding law of gravity: Leaders whose personal popularity lags that of their party's will either be dragged up by the brand or they will drag the brand down. Ignatieff must move now to foster the former and avoid risk of the latter.

Yes, he must continue to focus on disciplining and improving his performance. But he also needs a strategy that relies less on a collision between his and the prime minister's personal appeal. The Liberal advantage should be nurtured from soil more fertile than, "Do you like me better than him?" and clearer lines of issue differentiation are required.

The party is understandably hand shy about sweeping policy proposals after the Green Shift. But to avoid substantive cleavages risks betting the next election on a binary choice of leaders. That's a dumb wager when you've got so many more chips within reach.

For Ignatieff, upping his game begins by acknowledging that issues, values and ideas should be the backbone of the Liberal contrast with the Conservatives — not personality.