NDP supporters drunk on victory, or perhaps something else, celebrate and sing on the streets of downtown Toronto after their party became the Official Opposition.

CTV’s Parliamentary correspondent Richard Madan shares this exclusive video of Jack Layton doing a run through at the NDP headquarters on Monday afternoon. Layton hopes he is preparing for a victory rally, but only time will tell.

New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton, left, and wife Olivia Chow kiss after casting their ballots in Toronto, Ont., on Monday, May 2, 2011. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, right, kisses a women as he holds his voter's card before walks placing his vote at an certified election Canada polling station in Etobicoke, Ont., on Monday, May 2, 2011. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

Stephen Harper and his daughter Rachel arrive to vote in Calgary, Alta., Monday, May 2, 2011. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward

Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe and his wife Yolande Brunelle walk out of a polling station after they voted Monday, May 2, 2011 in Montreal. Canadians are going to the polls in a federal election. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jacques Boissinot

Green Party leader Elizabeth May, right, and her daughter Victoria Cate May Burton arrive at a polling station to cast their votes in the federal election in Sidney, B.C., on Monday May 2, 2011. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

Calgary students give Stephen Harper rock star treatment after he surprised kids playing in a school yard after voting at the elementary school on Monday. Of note: Elementary school girls were asking who the hot young boy with Harper was. It was Harper’s son, Ben.

Layton brought his wife, Olivia Chow, to the rally for Rathika Sitsabaiesan, his candidate in this riding. "I can't wait to have these two sisters sitting side-by-side in the House of Commons," he said.

In the riding of Beaches-East York, held by Maria Minna for the Liberals. Final whistlestop tour has featured large crowds in ridings where the NDP was previously considered an afterthought. Tonight, in the pouring rain, a large and enthusiastic turnout.

Winning this seat would be hugely symbolic for NDP. This riding was once held by leader Ed Broadbent, whose popularity helped the party win 43 seats in the House of Commons in 1988 — a record unmatched to this day.

A heckler is removed from a Conservative rally in London, Ont. on the final day of the election campaign. The man, Patrick McMahon, denied he was an NDP supporter despite holding a sign that said "orange crush" on it. He also made allegations about how he was being taken away.

While shooting this video, I was grabbed from behind by the RCMP - they said I was in the way.

NDP Leader Jack Layton's whistlestop tour hits Liberal-held Kingston with CTV’s Parliamentary correspondent Richard Madan capturing this video as hundreds lined up both sides of street to meet the candidate.

I know what's going to happen on Monday night ... Dave Quance just told me.

Quance has been CTV’s election analyst for every federal election night broadcast since 1974. When it comes to forecasting, seat projections and everything else to do with election results, Dave Quance is our secret weapon. 

Using skills he has honed for the past 57 years, he is the king-maker. Only when his team is confident their projections are bulletproof does Lloyd Robertson declare a winner on the air. CTV always wants to be first of course, but being right is more important, and on election night CTV has never been wrong.

In fact, in 2007 CTV was the only network that correctly projected that Jean Charest would be re-elected as Quebec Premier, something Charest couldn’t resist pointing out in his victory speech after reports of his political death turned out to have been exaggerated.

It is as much art as it is science, he says. CTV has a statistician who crunches the numbers Quance provides, but those numbers are based on a combination of eclectic factors, including but not limited to: polls, historical trends in each riding, demographics, media coverage, intelligence from local insiders he trusts to know the prevailing winds, and plain old gut instinct.

"I don’t necessarily know everything about political platforms,” he says. "But I know a lot about voters," he says.

No detail is too small or arcane to escape his notice. Want to know if a particular incumbent will be re-elected in an urban riding? The number of new high-rise apartment buildings built in her riding since the last election could mean the difference between winning and losing.

He stopped relying on the parties themselves a long time ago, finding their methodology not up to snuff.

"I started out phoning the parties and asking them who would win," says Quance. "Then I had to figure out who was lying to me the most."

He has worked for parties and candidates of all political stripes over the years, from former Tory Dalton Camp, to the Ontario NDP, to former Liberal finance minister Walter Gordon.  He convinced Gordon his message was not resonating with voters by placing a tape recorder on the floor during one of his stump speeches to capture the sound of restless feet.

Quance does not rely heavily on number-crunching or statistical models for his projections, saying any results the computer spews out as the real time results come in from the field have to "feel right" before he is confident enough to make a call on the outcome.  

Sometimes the answer comes to him as if in a vision, as it did in 1995 when he was working on the Quebec referendum.  Like a World War II spy trying to solve the Enigma Code, he tried without success to decipher the messages coming out of Quebec.  It came to him in a flash of inspiration he chooses to keep to himself -- a good magician never reveals his tricks -- and in half an hour he had come up with a formula that predicted the final result (50.56% "NO" to separation), accurate to within 1/1000th of a percentage point.

Quance does not expect to have that degree of accuracy on Monday night, but he has no doubt that Lloyd will declare that (redacted) will emerge with a (redacted) government.

You didn’t really think I was going to spoil the fun did you?

Sean O'Malley ran the CTV election desk for the last two federal campaigns.  This time he is focusing on social media.  For the latest election news as it happens every day of the campaign, follow him at @seanomalleyctv. Or if you have any questions or comments about the election and/or CTV’s coverage, send Sean a reply or a direct message on Twitter and he promises he will get back to you.