But..but...Ontario!

'Sure the NDP may be gaining some seats in Quebec and BC but it's Ontario that matters (Isn't it always?) and there those nasty NDP partisans are just getting in good Liberal candidates way!' - Or umpteen different variations of the same theme from the more reflexive and tribal of Liberal posters.

Not so fast.

Nationally, the EKOS poll has Stephen Harper’s Conservatives leading with 33.9-per-cent support. But the NDP are now clearly in second place – 27.9 per cent compared to 24 per cent for the Liberals. The Greens are 6.8 per cent, according to the poll of 2,532 people conducted between April 23 and April 25. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Mr. Graves, however, has detected something afoot in Ontario, which has been locked in a “seesaw battle between the Conservatives and the Liberals,” Mr. Graves said.

Now, he said, the two parties are hearing the “footsteps of the big orange wave (not to mix metaphors).”

The New Democrats are ahead, he said, of where they were in 2008, and “Ontario voters are flirting with the idea of jumping on the big orange bandwagon.”