[Senator Clay Davis]

So according to EKOS this election is pretty much over and it's going to be a CPC landslide.

Stephen Harper’s Conservative party has taken a commanding lead in the federal election race, a new poll suggests.

With less than a month to go in the campaign, and heading into the first of three leaders debates, the Tories have moved ahead of their rivals with the support of 35.4 per cent of voters, according to the Ekos poll conducted for Montreal’s La Presse newspaper.

Justin Trudeau and the Liberals have 26.3 per cent support and the NDP has the backing of 24.5 per cent of respondents. The poll questioned 2,343 people between Sept. 17 and Sept. 22 and is considered accurate to within two percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

The results would seem to smash the notion of a three-way horserace that has been recorded in polls conducted through the first eight weeks of the election campaign.

“If (the Conservatives) keep those numbers up they’re very close to a majority — if not there already,” said pollster Frank Graves. “The numbers are about as good as we had for the final weekend of polling (in the 2011 election) when they achieved their majority.”

Graves credits the Tory swing into the lead both on the missteps of Harper’s opponents and the targeted, emotional appeal to traditional Conservative voters that is bringing them back into the fold.

“It’s clear that there has been growth in some of the constituencies they won their majority with in 2011— people who had been sitting on the sidelines unhappy with them or whatever they were doing,” the pollster said. “They seem to have returned as a consequence of what has been going on over the last week.”

http://www.thestar.com/news/federal-...-suggests.html