OTTAWA—The Conservatives and Liberals appear to be ending the year the same way they started it — in a dead heat.

A new poll by The Canadian Press Harris-Decima suggests the Tories have the support of 31 per cent of Canadians, statistically tied with the Liberals at 29 per cent.

That’s far from the support levels needed to win a majority.

The tepid results are markedly different than a couple of other polls published recently which suggested the Tories had pulled into healthy lead, verging on majority territory.

And they’re likely to dampen speculation that Prime Minister Stephen Harper will want to pull the plug on his minority government early in the new year.

The poll suggests his party would not only fail to win a majority if an election was called today, it would come back with fewer seats than it won in 2008, when the Tories captured almost 38 per cent of the vote.

Harris-Decima chairman Allan Gregg said the poll suggests no party should be eager for an election any time soon.

“None of the political parties have any kind of assurances that there’s any prospect of them improving their electoral chances if they go to the polls,” Gregg said in an interview.

“I cannot see any political party being advantaged by precipitating an election.”

Gregg said the results reflect the “political stasis” that’s gripped the federal scene for most of the last five years. The two main parties have been stalled in a virtual tie, with occasional, but short-lived, surges or dips for one or the other.

For the most part, Gregg said the brief fluctuations have been the result of missteps by the Tories but the Liberals have never been able to “hold them to the ground” for more than a few weeks.

Nationally, the latest survey put NDP support at 15 per cent and the Greens’ at 11.

In Quebec, the Bloc Quebecois continued to dominate with 44 per cent to the Liberals’ 23. The Tories were well back at 11 per cent, statistically tied with the NDP at 10 per cent and only marginally ahead of the Greens at seven.

In the key electoral battleground of Ontario, which will likely determine the outcome of next election, the Liberals and Tories were tied at 36 per cent each. The NDP trailed with 14 per cent, just ahead of the Greens at 12.

The West continued to be fertile turf for the Tories.

In British Columbia, the Conservatives were at 32 per cent, the NDP at 24 and the Liberals and Greens both at 21.

In Alberta, the Tories were at 47 per cent, the Liberals at 24, the NDP at 14 and the Greens at 12.

And in Manitoba-Saskatchewan, the Tories were at 48 per cent, compared to 25 for the Liberals, 22 for the NDP and five for the Greens.

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However, the Liberals led in Atlantic Canada, with 42 per cent to the Tories’ 35, the NDP’s 17 and the Greens’ six.

The telephone survey of 2,022 Canadians was conducted Dec. 2-13. A sample this size is considered accurate within 2.2 percentage points, 19 times in 20.

The margin of error is larger for regional results.