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Stéphane Dion's Liberals are losing the crucial close-fought ridings they won in the last election, leaking potential voters not just to the Conservatives on the right but to the Greens on the left, a new poll tracking key electoral battlegrounds shows.

At the opening of the election campaign, the poll indicates that the Liberal claim on the centre-left vote they have traditionally dominated is fragmenting where they need it most.

Monday, the Conservatives, NDP, and Bloc Québécois succeeded in excluding Green Party Leader Elizabeth May from the leaders debates, arguing that she is a Liberal cheerleader – but the new poll suggests the Liberals have most reason to fear her.

The Strategic Counsel poll for The Globe and Mail and CTV News tracks the 45 ridings in B.C., Ontario, and Quebec that had the closest races in the 2006 election and in recent by-elections.

In 17 of those ridings that the Liberals won last time, the Tories have gone from an eight-percentage-point deficit in the last election to a seven-percentage-point lead. They have a 36-29 edge over the Liberals.

The dramatic shift is not only because the Tories have gained five percentage points in those ridings since the last election, but because the Liberals fell 10. And the Greens gained, jumping nine points, to 14 per cent. (The NDP slipped just one percentage point, to 18; the Bloc fell three points, to 3 per cent.)

“The Liberals are having trouble in their own backyard,” said the Strategic Counsel's Peter Donolo.

“The Conservatives … are not grabbing a disproportionate or particularly large share of that Liberal vote,” he said. “It seems to be going to the Greens predominantly.”

The Tory lead in those ridings would probably not mean 17 additional seats for Conservative Leader Stephen Harper, however. The Tories placed second in nine of the ridings last time, three were three-way contests where the NDP placed second and the other five were Liberal-NDP or Liberal-Bloc contests.

But the Conservatives, meanwhile, are strengthening their hold on the 16 ridings they won in close races, with margins ranging from 28 votes to a few thousand.

In those constituencies, the Tories have, since the last election, risen seven percentage points, to a commanding 47 per cent, while their opponents are now more split.

In those ridings, the Liberals have fallen six points to 26 per cent, and the NDP (down five points to 10 per cent) and Bloc (down three points to 5 per cent) have also lost support – but the Greens have risen seven percentage points, to 12.

Mr. Donolo said the results give credence to the theory that there is a turnaround taking place: While the Liberals benefited from a fractured right in the 1990s, the Conservatives now stand to gain from a fragmented left.

Liberal slippage to the Greens is visible in British Columbia, but strongest in Ontario, and not evident in Quebec.

However, even in the eight ridings where the Bloc Québécois won last time in tight races – in seven of them the Liberals placed second – the Conservatives are in the hunt, with 29 per cent support (up 10 points), chasing the Bloc, who have lost five percentage points to 35. The Liberals have lost 10 percentage points in those eight ridings since the last election, and are now at 20 per cent.

For Mr. Dion, the leakage of Liberal support to the Greens raises questions about the tactical alliance he has made with Ms. May.

He agreed not to run a Liberal candidate against her in the Nova Scotia riding of Central Nova, where Ms. May is trying to unseat Defence Minister Peter MacKay, and Ms. May has said she would prefer Mr. Dion as prime minister over Mr. Harper.

The question now is whether the Liberals can execute a key part of their strategy by making a late-campaign appeal for Green supporters to prevent Mr. Harper from winning, or getting a majority.

Yesterday, Mr. Harper defended his opposition to allowing Ms. May into the leaders' debates by arguing that she was little more than another Liberal candidate, but insisted there's no strategic downside to allowing the Green Party to participate “because it doesn't split our vote.”

Mr. Donolo noted that the recent Green support represents not just environmentalists, but a protest sentiment.

“We saw this in the last Ontario provincial election. It's not just environmentalists who will park with the Green Party, even up to and including election day sometimes. It's a kind of anti-purpose, catch-all, none-of-the-above party, too,” he said.

The poll indicates that in the 45 key battleground ridings, it's the Conservatives who have the most solid vote. A bigger proportion of those who say they intend to vote Liberal or NDP say they are likely to change their minds before election day. The Green vote appears as solid as the Liberal and NDP vote, or even more solid – although the sample sizes for Greens leave a wide margin of error.

With a report from Steven Chase