Nothing focuses the political mind like a poll that shows a big fat gap between the first- and second-place parties. Small wonder that new data from EKOS and Ipsos Reid showing a double-digit lead by the Conservatives has official Ottawa knotted up like cordwood. The beautiful people that cram the salons, saloons and television studios of our nation's capital are now officially obsessed with two questions: When will the next federal election be held? And who will win?

Important as these are, a third question may prove to be even more fundamental to the future course of Canadian history: What awaits the party that fails to form government? The short answer is plenty. In fact, the manner in which the loser of the next election — Conservative or Liberal — manages the fallout of failure will likely be more consequential than the way in which the winner responds to success.

Underlying fault lines within both our major parties suggest that someone's status quo is set for a vigorous challenge — but only the loser will find themselves forced to endure the cleansing colonic of debating who they are and for what they stand. (Winning offers a reprieve from such unwelcome remedies). What's interesting to note is that whether it's the Conservatives or the Liberals, a loss will lead not simply to a discussion of leadership renewal. It will almost surely spark an existential debate among party members. At stake will be nothing less than who and even how many political parties we'll continue to have at the national level - and whether traditional brokerage parties are set to become a relic of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Let's start with the Conservatives and what happens in the less likely world where they're run from office to the opposition benches.

Since its creation in 2003, the Conservative Party of Canada has been almost wholly rendered in Stephen Harper's image. It reflects his personality completely: impressively disciplined, sharply focused, ideological but not impractical and menacingly partisan. It is also distinctly western-based with a wide streak of Reform-rooted doctrine that teaches a distrusting suspicion of central institutions such as the judiciary, the foreign service and the federal bureaucracy. It craves power but loathes government. An election loss will almost surely force a post-Harper debate among Conservatives as to who they are and what they ought to be.

Expect a push from Red Tory remnants who will argue that Harper's failure to secure a majority serves to underscore the need to move further to the political middle, elect a leader from central Canada and reclaim its position as a welcoming, centrist alternative. Expect a harder push back from the pur laine Conservatives who will dismiss these arguments and re-create the party as something even harder than Harper has fashioned. Something that will turn off Quebec, alienate women and surrender many of the gains that Harper has carved from the hard granite of the right wing political landscape. The Conservatives won't fracture. They'll fight. And one side will win entirely over the other. Expect the Red Tories to lose and leave a gaping hole in the middle for someone to seize.

The Liberals may face an even more perilous debate. A loss will see Canada's most successful political institution plunged into not one, but two debates about their future. First, what sort of leader would be needed to truly renew and revitalize the party's hopes of regaining government? And second, whether to merge with the NDP, and possibly the Greens in an effort to unite-the-left. The two discussions will become, by necessity, interwoven. Camps will form and leadership candidates will arise, presenting themselves as champions for one or the other cause. At the heart of the discussion will be a simple question: Is the Liberal Party able to win only if it ceases to be the Liberal Party?

Merger proponents will argue that simple math dictates a fundamental change is required. With the NDP and Greens drawing roughly one in four voters, they'll insist the Conservatives have the sort of structural advantage that the Liberals once enjoyed when Quebec was automatically theirs. They'll advocate a shift to the left and a sharp polarization of our politics into a binary choice of exclusive extremes. As though America's political spectacle of Sarah Palin and Keith Olberman is a success to be emulated.

Those opposed will urge the party to stand its ground and earn power the old-fashioned way: By seizing the centre and winning more swing voters than the Conservatives. This will be a blistering argument with hard feelings and spilled blood — because that's what happens when you consider euthanizing a party that has succeeded for a century after only a half-decade of insufficient returns. "A week is an eternity in politics," some unoriginal advocate of urgent merger action will inevitably misquote Harold Wilson as saying. That may be true. But it doesn't mean that people shouldn't strive to have memories that stretch back more than seven days.

Whoever wins the next election, the loser will face a helluva fight for the future of their party. And it's from that process of losing, not winning, that the farthest reaching political consequences to our country will be found.