The federal NDP has now moved into sole possession of the lead in public support, according to new poll results from Forum Research.

The survey, conducted Sunday and Monday, has 34 per cent of Canadian adult voters favouring the New Democrats in the federal election, which will be held Oct. 19. Thirty-four per cent would be enough to give the NDP a minority government, the poll numbers show.

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The Conservatives are tied with the Liberals, each capturing 27 per cent support from survey respondents.

With the margin of error of 3 percentage points, it’s even a closer race, but the NDP has been trending upward recently.

In the last Forum poll, conducted July 5-7, the party broke out of a three-way tie to a two-way with the Conservatives.

The trend is an improvement for the New Democrats, who had been stalled far back in third place in voter support for nearly two years.

Given the latest polling, the NDP would capture a healthy minority of 132 seats in what will be a 338-seat House of Commons, 38 seats short of a majority government, Forum says.

The Conservatives would take 107 seats and the Liberals 79, according to the pollster. Green and Bloc Québécois seats make up the remainder.

Forum Research president Lorne Bozinoff said: “We’ve now arrived where this trend was apparently going anyway, with the NDP in sole possession of first place.

“However, when the electorate is as volatile as Canadians appear to be now, polling can become an exercise in looking over your shoulder, and events change before you finish measuring them.”

In one battleground province, Ontario, the Forum survey has the federal Liberals with a slight lead — 34-per-cent support — compared to 31 per cent for the Conservatives and the NDP’s 30 per cent.

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The poll results are based on an interactive voice response telephone survey of 1,251 randomly selected Canadian adults. The point-in-time results are considered accurate plus or minus 3 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Forum’s poll is weighted statistically by age, region and other variables to ensure the sample reflects the actual population according to the latest census data.

The weighting formula has been shared with the Star, and raw polling results are housed at the University of Toronto’s political science department’s data library.