TORONTO — Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal party is gaining momentum in the election campaign and now leads the Conservatives by a paper-thin margin, according to a new poll done for the Ottawa Citizen.

The governing Liberals are siting at 38 per cent support, a slim, one-point lead over the Progressive Conservative party, which are at 37 per cent support, according to the Ipsos Reid poll.

The third-place New Democratic Party is showing robust support, at 24 per cent, while the Green party has almost disappeared from public support at one per cent.

The poll is the first to track support since the provincial campaign kicked off Sept 7. The contest has so far been dominated by talk of a Liberal tax credit for employers hiring skilled immigrants. The Tories portrayed that policy as one that would prioritize “foreign” workers over the nearly 500,000 domestic unemployed, despite Liberal assurances it applied only to Canadian citizens.

Canadian voters have radically redrawn the country’s political landscape, handing the Conservative Party its long-sought majority in an election that decimated the Bloc Québécois and humbled the Liberals.

For the first time in history, the New Democratic Party will form the Official Opposition after an extraordinary breakthrough that propelled the party to more than 100 seats.

The extent of the transformation is startling. The Liberals now hold just four seats west of Guelph, Ont. The Conservatives, formerly shunned by Toronto voters, won nearly half of the seats in that city, twice as many as the Liberals.