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Joan Bryden
THE CANADIAN PRESS

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OTTAWA - Support for the Green party appears to be ebbing away as Stéphane Dion intensifies his eleventh-hour pitch for all "progressive" voters to rally behind the Liberals to stop Stephen Harper's Conservatives.

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The Canadian Press

Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion makes his entrance as he is followed by his wife Janine Krieber and daughter Jeanne, left, during a campaign stop in Toronto, Ont. Sunday.

With only two days until Tuesday's vote, the latest Canadian Press Harris-Decima rolling survey suggests Conservatives were tantalizingly close to a majority with 35 per cent support, maintaining a comfortable nine-point lead over the Liberals.

The NDP was holding steady at 18 per cent while the Bloc Québécois had 10 per cent nationally and a commanding 22-point lead in Quebec.

The only sign of movement was in Green party support, which dropped to nine per cent. Only a few days ago, Harris-Decima had Green support as high as 12 per cent - almost triple the popular vote won by the nascent party in 2006.

Campaigning in Toronto, Liberal Leader Dion issued an urgent appeal for Green supporters to abandon their first choice and back the Grits.

He acknowledged that Liberals are not running a candidate in Central Nova, hoping to help Green Leader Elizabeth May defeat Defence Minister Peter MacKay.

But he said: "Everywhere else, go green, vote red."

Dion, who will be in Fredericton today for a rally, argued that strategically voting for the Liberals doesn't mean Greens have to sacrifice their principles. He maintained that both parties share a commitment to social justice and fighting global warming and vowed that "Canada will never have a greener prime minister than me."

While siphoning off Green support might help Liberals hold the Conservatives to another minority, the poll suggests Dion would need a collapse in NDP support to pull off an upset.

The NDP has frequently seen its support erode in the final days of a campaign as the race polarizes into a contest between the two frontrunners. But Sunday's poll suggests the party is having greater success this time holding onto its vote, although it has not been able to sustain a mid-campaign surge that briefly saw the NDP challenging the Liberals for second place.

Dion went after New Democrat votes aggressively Sunday. He repeated no less than five times that "a vote for Jack Layton won't stop Stephen Harper" as he rhymed off a litany of the prime minister's alleged failings.

"I urge all progressive Canadians to make your vote count on Tuesday to make sure that we do not have more Stephen Harper," Dion said. "We do not want more of this. Enough is enough."

NDP Leader Jack Layton was simultaneously shoring up his party's support in the key battleground of Ontario, conducting a whirlwind seven-stop blitz through the province's devastated manufacturing heartland.

At an early morning rally in Windsor, Layton accused Prime Minister Harper of simply standing by as 400,000 manufacturing jobs left the country over the past few years. He vowed to repair the damage by implementing a "Buy Canadian" program and negotiating fairer trade deals.

Harper was in Quebec, trying to recoup ground lost earlier in the campaign when government cuts to cultural programs and promises of tougher youth crime sentences backfired badly on the Conservatives. The Tories had initially hoped to make sufficient gains in the province to secure Harper's coveted majority but recent polls suggest they'll be lucky to hang onto the 10 seats they've got.

Sunday's Canadian Press Harris-Decima survey put the Tories in third place in Quebec with 19 per cent support, well behind the Bloc at 43 per cent. The Liberals had 21 per cent while the NDP were at nine per cent and the Greens at four per cent.

Harper urged Quebecers to elect Conservatives who can be part of government rather than Bloquistes who can only sit on the opposition benches. He argued that economic turmoil makes it all the more important for Quebec to be represented at the federal cabinet table.

"The Bloc has had a majority of (Quebec) seats in Ottawa for the past 18 years and yet they offer nothing to protect the Quebec economy, nothing at all," he told a rally in St. Tite, Que.

"At this time of uncertainty, I want you to be seated at the table where decisions are made. The leader of the Bloc wants Quebecers to stay in the hallway with their arms crossed."

Harris-Decima president Bruce Anderson suggested Harper's time might have been better spent in Ontario.

"The strength of the BQ in Quebec means that for the Conservatives, Ontario is a critical battleground for the last two days of the campaign," Anderson said.

The latest survey results put the Tories in the lead in the country's largest province, with 36 per cent to the Liberals' 32 per cent, the NDP's 21 per cent and the Greens' 10 per cent.

While the Conservatives have shown late-campaign momentum in Ontario, Anderson said the Liberals remain competitive and voters appear to be highly volatile.

The national results represent 1,284 interviews conducted Wednesday through Saturday with a margin of error of 2.7 per cent, 19 times out of 20. The margin of error is greater among the regional polls.

More information on the poll is available from www.harrisdecima.com. Respondents to the poll were asked the following question: "If a federal election were to be held tomorrow, whom do you think you would be voting for in your area?"