http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ontario-key-to-breaking-liberal-conservative-deadlock-1.2998562

Ontario in the driver's seat

The polls have also been very steady in Ontario, where the hottest battle in the country is being waged. The Liberals are narrowly ahead with 37 per cent support, just one point up on the Conservatives. In fact, in every week but one since the Christmas break the gap between the two parties has never been wider than 1.2 points.

NDP Leader Tom Mulcair, left, met this week with Toronto Mayor John Tory. (Darren Calabrese/Canadian Press)

The seat implications are enormous. The projection model gives the Conservatives between 47 and 65 seats and the Liberals between 43 and 59 seats in Ontario. Those ranges represent just under half of the swing seats the model currently identifies for the two parties anywhere in Canada.

A shift of as little as three points in Ontario from the Tories to the Liberals, for instance, would be enough to put Trudeau's party in a position to come out ahead in the seat count nationwide.

The New Democrats are bystanders in this electoral struggle, with 18 per cent support in the province. They are looking a little better recently, with polls ranging between 16 and 23 per cent over the last month, compared to a range of between 13 and 21 per cent in the month prior to that.

The political debate over the last few weeks has been largely driven by Ontario.

The NDP's need to improve its numbers in Toronto in order to have a shot at government explains Tom Mulcair's recent big speech in the provincial capital. The firestorm over the niqab has also been fuelled by the decisive importance of cultural communities in the Greater Toronto Area, where many of the swing seats in this year's election are located.

For now, neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives have managed to pull ahead, and the New Democrats have a lot of ground to make up. Ontario should remain the focus of each party's electoral strategy straight through to October.