OTTAWA—Jack Layton continues to surge in popularity among voters, giving his New Democrats vital momentum going into Monday’s election, largely at the expense of the Liberals, a new poll reveals.

The NDP are at 33 per cent support nationwide, up three percentage points in recent days and just four points back from the Conservatives who are at 37 per cent, up two, according to the latest Angus Reid poll done in partnership with the Toronto Star and La Presse.

The Liberals have dropped by three percentage points this week to 19 per cent. That’s where the NDP stood at the start of the campaign, illustrating the stunning turn in fortunes for both parties. The Green Party is up one percentage point to 4 per cent.

The growth of the NDP’s popularity has shown little signs of ebbing, Mukerji said.

“There was a lot of discussion that it might be peak, it might crest. It seems like it’s gaining some momentum,” he said.

While surprising now, the roots of the NDP surge were evident before the election in polls that showed Layton was popular with voters.

“There was a large number of Canadians who were not enthralled with the prospect of a Tory majority. And you had a Liberal leader who was deeply unpopular, who hadn’t even really assured his own base, and you had an NDP leader who was very popular,” Mukerji said in an interview Friday.

“You can see it in that sense that of course it could have happened.”

The Conservatives have stretched their lead in Ontario, where the party must make gains if Stephen Harper is to achieve his goal of winning a majority. The Tories are at 41 per cent, with the NDP at 27 per cent, the Liberals at 26 per cent and the Greens at 5 per cent.

But the real success story for the NDP is in Quebec, where Layton’s party enjoys the backing of 45 per cent of voters. Gilles Duceppe and the Bloc Québécois have slipped to 26 per cent, the Liberals are at 16 per cent and Conservatives at 13 per cent.

A big part of the NDP’s success seems to be Canadians’ approval of Layton, who has defied naysayers who questioned his stamina because of hip surgery just before the campaign kicked off at the end of March.

The poll found 50 per cent approve of Layton’s performance and 69 per cent find him appealing, a welcome stamp of approval compared to the cool reaction given his rivals, Harper and Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff.

Still, 31 per cent of voters say Harper would make the best prime minister but Layton is close behind at 29 per cent. Just 11 per cent say Ignatieff would be a good pick for the country’s top job.

Harper is seen as a steady hand at crime and the economy, Layton is viewed as a good choice to tackle health care, the environment and ethics. Respondents didn’t see Ignatieff as a stand-out to lead on any of the issues surveyed.

Despite a largely gaffe-free campaign and a platform with family-friendly policies, Ignatieff has failed to ignite the imagination of voters. Canadians haven’t warmed to his leadership and now seem to be tuning out and turning away, Mukerji said.

“The bottom seems to be falling out a little bit for the Liberals here in the home stretch,” Mukerji said.

A majority of those surveyed — 58 per cent — said they disapprove of Ignatieff’s performance. And 46 per cent said their opinion of the Liberal leader had worsened over the last month.

The new poll reveals that just 57 per cent of those voted Liberal in the 2008 election intend to do again this time.

“The base is very jittery about what is going on,” he said.

The surprise surge of the NDP sets the stage for a wild finish on election night that veteran pollsters are reluctant to predict.

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“I’m not exactly sure what it means for the seats,” Mukerji said. “At this point, ground game comes into it, too, in terms of your ability to motivate people to get out to vote.

“The Conservative base really has maintained a sense of cohesion. They’re a well-organized political machine.”

The online poll of 3,003 Canadians was done on Thursday and Friday. The margin of error is 1.8 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.