The NPA under mayoral candidate Kirk LaPointe faces a daunting challenge.

How can the centre-right opposition come back after being slaughtered in the last two Vancouver elections?

Let's start by looking at the strikes against the NPA:

• Its brand has been badly battered by a relentless assault from Vision Vancouver councillors and park commissioners.

• The NPA's 2011 mayoral candidate, Suzanne Anton, trailed Mayor Gregor Robertson by nearly 19,000 votes.

• Its 2008 mayoral candidate, Peter Ladner, lost to Robertson by nearly an identical margin.

• The number of votes coming out of the NPA's bedrock areas of strength—Shaughnessy, Southlands, Kerrisdale, and Southeast Vancouver—have remained flat in recent years.

• The number of votes cast in Vision Vancouver's strongholds have increased because of densification.

• Vision has created a broad-based party with strong support in the LGBT community, as well as among the city's many cyclists, environmentalists, and high-tech entrepreneurs.

• Vision has enjoyed the backing of some of the city's major residential real-estate developers, including Westbank and Wall Financial, as well as the city's top condo marketer, Bob Rennie. This means there will be no shortage of funding to hire data analysts, conduct polling on issues, identify supporters, and get them out to the polls on election day.

• Vision has done a stellar job of outreach to diverse communities. This has come in part by running a diverse slate of candidates but also through old-fashioned hard work. Its politicians routinely show up at events involving different cultural communities. At several celebrations I've attended, Vision has been the only party with a presence.

Meanwhile, school trustees Ken Denike and Sophia Woo were often the only NPA politicians I've spotted at events involving diverse communities. Not long ago, the NPA booted them out of caucus and they're likely to run as independents.

Yet still the NPA could win the election. Here's how.

1. Do whatever it can to avoid being seen by left-wing voters as reactionary. It's doing a decent job so far in this department with councillors Elizabeth Ball and George Affleck, who were two of the most progressive candidates on the party's 2011 council slate. Similarly, NPA commissioners Melissa De Genova and John Coupar have come across as political moderates, as has NPA school trustee Fraser Ballantyne.

2. Run a mayoral candidate who doesn't come across as a right-wing knuckle dragger. They've found this in LaPointe, a former CBC ombudsman and former managing editor of the Vancouver Sun.

3. Present LaPointe as someone with great empathy for the poor. He's already talking about his humble background and pledging that he'll ensure no children go hungry in Vancouver. This will help the NPA forge inroads in the northern section of the city—and particularly on the East Side—where it's fared so poorly in recent elections.

4. Try to make the election about trust, which is where Vision has encountered difficulties, particularly in its dealings with neighbourhoods.

5. The NPA has to polish its environmental credentials in a high-profile way to offset Vision's efforts to stigmatize the party as the voice of Big Oil in Vancouver.

6. Once left-wing voters realize that this year's NPA is not a hard right-wing party, they won't feel that they have to vote for Robertson and Vision to prevent a bunch of reactionaries from taking over City Hall.

7. The NPA has to hope it gets lucky with COPE running a high-profile mayoral candidate who can siphon votes away from Robertson.

8. The NPA must avoid running a full slate for council. That was one of its biggest mistakes in 2011 because it split the vote, allowing the Greens' Adriane Carr to snatch the final seat.

If LaPointe and the other NPA candidates are sufficiently noncontroversial, we might see fewer voters showing up at the ballot box on election day.

Whenever turnout declines, the NPA benefits. And if there's bad weather on election day—such as occurred on voting day in 1996—the NPA might pull off a surprise.

This is why LaPointe will benefit if he forces Vision into avoiding conducting a smear campaign against him. If there's an absence of personal attacks, it might make the election more boring for voters, leading to reduced turnout, thereby assisting the NPA's prospects.

Right now, it seems far-fetched to think that Vision could lose control of city council.

But people felt the same way back in 2002 when COPE chose a different kind of mayoral candidate, ex-cop and ex-coroner Larry Campbell.

Campbell was a political outsider, just like LaPointe. But Campbell was a shrewd campaigner and he went into the election with tons of experience in dealing with media.

It's too early to say if LaPointe will be in a position to replicate Campbell's success, but the NPA standard-bearer is no amateur in media relations.

LaPointe can calibrate his message for each respective media outlet.

He might tilt a little left for the CBC, go a bit harder right on CKNW Radio, and know that no matter what, he'll be treated fairly by his former colleagues at the Vancouver Sun. Glacier Media outlets shouldn't be a huge problem, given that one of its executives is on the NPA board of directors.

So for now, it's far too early to count LaPointe out.