It may be just another blip in the polling, or it could really be the NDP benefitting from weaker BQ numbers. Lots of trees will be consumed in this debate, and many electrons will be inconvenienced. The national numbers don’t show the pattern all that well, but the NDP may finally be close to that popularity breakthrough they’ve been hoping for since the brief taste of power they got in the Trudeau years. Instead of asking the Liberal leader how many NDP cabinet seats he’d need to give to Jack Layton, we might be asking Jack how many Liberal cabinet ministers he’d have in his coalition.

Jack Layton’s New Democratic Party has surged past Gilles Duceppe’s faltering Bloc Quebecois and is now in first place in Quebec, according to an Ekos public opinion poll released exclusively to iPolitics.

The poll, conducted earlier this week, found the New Democrats have jumped 10 percentage points since the eve of the leaders debate to 31.1% while the Bloc has dropped like a rock by 7.4 percentage points to 23.7%.

The Liberals are steady at 20.6% while the Conservatives have dropped slightly to 16.9%.

While the margin of error is higher at the city level, in Montreal the NDP is at 32.9% while the Bloc is at 29.7%.

Nationally, the NDP is now in a statistical tie with the Liberals at 24.9% to 25.8%. Both lag well behind the Conservatives who were preferred by 34.5% of respondents.

Update: Jane Taber has more on the regional breakdown:

Atlantic Canada now is shaping up to be a three-way race, with the NDP gaining every day for the past seven days. The Tories are at 36.3 per cent followed by the Liberals with 33.1 per cent and the NDP at 28.3 per cent. (There is a margin of error of plus or minus 9.7 percentage points, 19 times out of 20 in the regional sample.)

In British Columbia, the Liberals have dropped significantly — Mr. Ignatieff has seen his support decrease from 33.5 per cent Monday to 22.7 per cent Wednesday night. The Conservatives have 43.5 per cent support and the NDP are at 29.6 per cent, up from 24.7 per cent the night before. (The margin of error in that province is plus or minus 7.9 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.)

In Quebec, Mr. Layton remains strong although the Bloc is still in first place with 32 per cent support compared to 23.4 per cent for the NDP, 20.8 per cent for the Liberals and 17.5 per cent for the Conservatives. “At 32 per cent it would be the worst ever showing for the BQ in a federal election,” Mr. Nanos said, noting that their previous worst showing was in 1997 where they won 37.9 per cent of the vote.‬

If all of this isn’t just a blip, it’s terrible news for Michael Ignatieff. That grinding noise you hear is the knife-sharpening back at Liberal HQ.

Update, the second: If the initial news was promising for Jack Layton, the poll done for La Presse must have been like a big shot of adrenalin:

A new poll by CROP for La Presse suggests that the enthusiasm for Mr. Layton is such that the NDP has now overtaken the Bloc Québécois in voting intentions for the first time in Canadian history. The online poll suggested that the NDP is now first choice for 36% of Quebecers, compared to 31% for the Bloc, 17% for the Conservatives and a mere 13% for the once mighty Liberal Party.

Having heard the NDP boast about “historic breakthroughs” over the years, I’m loath to get too carried away until these numbers are confimed by other pollsters. In 2008, Mr. Layton was in a statistical tie with Stéphane Dion two weeks before election day but ended up trailing by eight points and 40 MPs.

Yet there are signs this time might be different. In Quebec in particular, the Liberal brand is damaged goods and the Bloc is looking like a tired, one-trick pony. There is nowhere else to go for left-of-centre voters.

Update, the third: Forum Research says that the NDP is already in second place nationally:

“The Tories are ahead everywhere except Quebec, it’s all going to come down to what happens in Quebec,” says Mr. Bozinoff, noting the tradition of Quebec voters to move en masse when they have sharply changed preferences in past elections.

The survey of 2,727 voting-age Canadians was conducted Wednesday evening. It was an interactive voice response survey with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.2 per cent 19 times out of 20. The margin of error for regional and provincial breakdowns is slightly higher, but in such a large survey, with 348 citizens reached in the GTA alone, it is a reliable indicator of election trend lines.

Nationally, the survey gave the Conservative Party support from 36 per cent of decided and leaning voters, 25 per cent for the NDP, 23 per cent for the Liberal party, and six per cent each for the Green Party and the Bloc Québécois. A separate Forum Research analysis, based partly on ridings won and lost in the 2008 election, suggest the survey results would give the Conservatives 149 of the 308 Commons seats if an election were held today, with 71 seats for the NDP, 64 for the Liberals and the Bloc Québécois would have 24 seats.

My occasionally updated percentage tracker, now (thanks to commenter request) with a graph to match: