OTTAWA–Prime Minister Stephen Harper is outshining rival Michael Ignatieff and putting the Conservatives on track for a possible majority in the next election, a new Angus Reid Strategies/Toronto Star poll has found.

While party numbers remain static, Harper outscores Ignatieff on key questions of leadership that stand to give him a vital competitive edge among voters, said Jodi Shanoff, vice-president of public affairs for Angus Reid Strategies.

"This is not good news for Michael Ignatieff. ... Stephen Harper should be emboldened by numbers like these. They are pretty encouraging for him," she said yesterday.

The news is especially bad for Ignatieff since it suggests a TV advertising blitz and the Liberals' headline-making declaration to no longer support the minority Conservatives has had little impact.

"It doesn't appear that any of these things are getting any traction with Canadians yet," she said.

The poll found the Tories are up 1 point to 37 per cent support from earlier this month, the Liberals remain at 29 per cent and the New Democrats are down a point to 16.

"The polling numbers themselves don't suggest that Stephen Harper is in majority territory yet, even though his lead is widening. But all the other support indicators suggest (he) has all the momentum right now," Shanoff said.

Canadians see Harper as better suited than Ignatieff to tackle the economy (33 per cent to 23 per cent), health care (23 to 16) and crime (38 to 12). The Liberal leader is more trusted by Canadians than Harper on the foreign affairs file (30 per cent to 28 per cent) but, said Shanoff, "that's not a substantive policy area that we stay up at night thinking about. It's the economy, it's health care, it's other things that we think Stephen Harper is doing a decent job with."

The poll found that 27 per cent of Canadians favoured Harper as prime minister, compared to 16 per cent for Ignatieff and 12 per cent for NDP Leader Jack Layton.

The poll of 997 Canadians was conducted Sept. 23 and 24, and has a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

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