The latest Ipsos-Reid poll for CTV and The Globe and Mail has the Tories enjoying 36 per cent support and the Liberals 27 per cent.

And in Ontario, big gains for the Tories: They are up seven points to 39 per cent support while the Liberals are down a point to 33 per cent.

(Keep in mind the margins of error for regional breakouts are higher than for the national poll. Nationally, the margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. One thousand people were sampled.)

According to the Globe and Mail story, majority governments have been formed in Canada with 37 per cent support.

I suspect that was in the Liberal salad days of the 1990s, when they owned Ontario and there was no united right.

If this keeps up, the Tories will make substantial gains, but it's unlikely those gains will come in the heart of Toronto, for example. Many of those ridings would be more likely to go NDP if there was a collective move to toss the Liberals.

Let's not forget that on Tuesday, 50 per cent of respondents said they wouldn't vote Conservative under any circumstances, compared to 55 per cent who said the same thing about the Liberals.

Here's an excerpt from the Globe story on how  Prime Minister Paul Martin and Conservative Leader Stephen Harper stack up leadership-wise:

One of the most interesting sections of the poll contrasts how Canadians feel about Mr. Harper with how they feel about the Prime Minister.

More of those surveyed picked Mr. Martin as the best person to lead Canada: 42 per cent compared with 34 per cent for Mr. Harper. And a majority said Mr. Martin was better on economic and foreign issues and that he held values that were more in tune with their own.

But 40 per cent of respondents selected Mr. Harper as the person Canadians trust, compared with 35 per cent for Mr. Martin. Ontario respondents to that question were split at 37 per cent for each man.

As for the person they believe would be most likely to clean up corruption in Ottawa, Mr. Harper was the runaway favourite, with 41 per cent saying he is the person for the job. Mr. Martin got the nod from just 26 per cent.

"If this election is about cleaning up corruption, it's very good for Harper," Mr. Bricker said. "On the fundamental questions of what a prime minister needs to represent, i.e. trust, he's in the game. And that's not his typical profile."

Globe and Mail bureau chief Brian Laghi wrote an analysis. Here's an excerpt:

If an election campaign had been launched even a few weeks ago, the Prime Minister's brains trust would probably have argued that Canadians don't believe, deep in their bones, that he had anything to do with the sponsorship scandal. They would also have made the case that Stephen Harper is too different from rank-and-file voters to attract widespread support. Both tactics worked a year ago.

But according to a new Globe and Mail/CTV/Ipsos-Reid poll, which now puts the Conservatives nine percentage points ahead of the governing Liberals, Canadians' trust in their Prime Minister is being shaken in the wake of the sponsorship scandal, and Mr. Harper may not be the odd duck Liberals would paint him as.

Perhaps the most striking finding in yesterday's poll is that Canadians are now more likely to have faith in Mr. Harper than in Mr. Martin.