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Yes, this was a campaign about Donald Trump and who can stand up to the disruptive president and his 51st-state taunts. It was also about affordability and the economy.

But no matter how the results shake out on Monday night, all of the parties 鈥� and especially Mark Carney鈥檚 Liberals and Pierre Poilievre鈥檚 Conservatives 鈥� will need to remember that the votes they courted the most were in the political centre. This is a hard-won truth that neither can afford to ignore once they are in power.

For the Liberals, the past few months have been all about tacking toward the centre-right, to counter the perception that Justin Trudeau dragged the government too far to the left. Carney won the Liberal leadership largely on his promise to attract blue Liberals back to the fold, and he conducted his election campaign on that same track, stressing his experience as a fiscal manager.

For the Conservatives, the quest for the middle meant rubbing off the hard edges of Poilievre鈥檚 angry, right-wing populism. 鈥淭oo Trumpy,鈥� said the long-time campaign manager for Ontario Premier Doug Ford, in an intervention that will be seen as a pivotal point in this election, whenever the story of it is written.

There was foreshadowing of how this campaign would be fought in an Angus Reid poll last September. It was titled 鈥� and reported that one third of Canadians said they felt like 鈥渙rphans鈥� as politics became more polarized. An even larger proportion 鈥� almost half 鈥� said none of the mainstream parties truly respected their views.

During the past five weeks, those orphans the Angus Reid poll identified are now seen as swing voters, or undecided ones, and the battle was shaped by who best captured the centrist votes. The two men most likely to end up as prime minister spent a lot of time arguing they are best placed to lead Canadians to the middle of the road.

Carney wasn鈥檛 going to get these Canadians鈥� votes by promising to recreate the deal between the Liberals and New Democrats. Instead, he said he would respect what it achieved 鈥� pharmacare, dental care 鈥� but stressed repeatedly he would be a Liberal leader who did this within the bounds of what the country could afford.

Poilievre, meanwhile, abandoned a lot of his reckless rhetoric about firing bank governors (Carney used to be one) or pulling up trailers to empty the offices of the CBC and sell the public broadcaster off for scrap.

The Conservative leader did one makeover a couple of years ago to remove his glasses. He did another makeover during this election campaign to look friendlier, even to the media with whom he鈥檚 tussled. During the English-language leaders鈥� debate 鈥� in which he did well 鈥� Poilievre kept his tone steady and prime ministerial, which could also be seen as a play for the moderate middle ground.

While the two big parties were duking it out for the centre, the New Democrats and the Bloc Qu茅b茅cois were doing their own play for the middle, arguing that the best result on Monday would be a minority Parliament.

In essence, this is an appeal to keep the Commons from being too Liberal or too Conservative 鈥� one in which the governing party would have to find middle ground with one or more of the opposition parties.

The problem with that argument, though, is that the last Parliament was so polarized between the government and the Conservatives to the point of dysfunction last fall. Would a new minority government just be more of the same?

Trump has loomed large in this campaign and it may well be that what he has done to politics in the U.S. has heightened Canadians鈥� desire for a more moderate middle in this country. There may be a segment of the voting public that looks favourably on the president, but poll after poll shows that most Canadians are not keen on seeing Trumpism flourish here. All of the leaders in this campaign, in their own way, made clear that they stood opposed to Trump.

Political operatives, especially the cynical ones, will argue that the middle is boring; that the only way to keep Canadians engaged is to keep politics as a sharp, polarized choice.

But this campaign shows the opposite. The quest for the middle ground, from all of the parties, has been the most interesting part of this election.