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Support for Stephen Harper's Conservatives appears to have softened after briefly climbing into majority territory during the opening week of the federal election campaign.

The trend suggests the Tory Leader may have bumped up against the same glass ceiling that has prevented him from capturing a majority in the past, with Canadians backing away from the prospect of giving Conservatives unfettered power.

“I think we're seeing some evidence of people pulling back a little bit, not necessarily going somewhere else in large numbers but saying let's take a pause,” pollster Bruce Anderson said.

Mr. Anderson said last week's spike in Tory numbers may have reflected the party's big head start on campaign advertising. The Tories were running a series of ads for at least a week prior to the official campaign start, while the other parties were much slower off the mark.

The fact that rival parties are now getting a bigger share of air time and equal media coverage “is creating a kind of leavening effect,” the pollster said.

Mr. Anderson, president of Harris-Decima, was reflecting on the latest results from a daily rolling poll that allows his company to track shifts and trends during the campaign. Roughly 300 Canadians are interviewed each night and those survey results are rolled into those from the previous three days to produce a four-day sample of more than 1,200 respondents.

A sample of this size has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.6 percentage points 19 times in 20.

According to the latest Canadian Press Harris-Decima rolling survey, conducted Sept. 11-14, Tory support slipped to 38 per cent from 41 per cent over the past four days.

Liberal support rebounded slightly to 27 per cent, up three percentage points. The New Democrats had 16 per cent, up two points, while the Green Party and Bloc Quebecois remained stable at 9 per cent and 8 per cent respectively.

In the past two elections, Tory support climbed within reach of a majority toward the end of the campaigns then dropped back as voters got spooked. The fact that the Tories hit the majority ceiling early in this campaign may give them more time to recover.

Mr. Anderson said Conservatives should be mindful that their numbers – mired in the low to mid-thirties for months prior to the campaign kick-off – shot up after they ran a series of positive ads featuring a folksy, sweater-clad Harper chatting about his kids, his love of the north and his respect for war veterans.

“All of a sudden, simply by doing and saying some things that people really wanted to hear them say, they were able to bounce up significantly above that [pre-writ support level],” he said.

“So having created that bounce, I think they've proven to themselves that if they continue to do those things . . . that they probably can achieve some significant gains.”

Mr. Anderson said the success of the warm and fuzzy ads suggests that the Tories would be ill-advised to launch more negative, partisan ads.

“This poses some significant risks for them. Even though it may feel like it's normal campaign activity, it may come with a higher cost than it has in the past.”

By contrast, Mr. Anderson said the trend lines suggest the Liberals need to become more aggressive. They've rebounded, not so much because of anything they've done, but because they appear to remain the default choice for those who've had second thoughts about the Tories.

“That, in and of itself, isn't enough to build a campaign on,” Anderson said.

“I think the Liberals really need to look at this as an opportunity to hit the reset button, to charge forward, to take the debate about the economy, about the environment and about leadership on those issues to the Conservatives.”

If Liberals fail to polarize the campaign as a choice between them and the Tories, Mr. Anderson said that could present an opportunity for the NDP to pick up those voters who don't want a Tory majority.

A regional breakdown of the latest numbers suggests the Liberals have picked up some support in Quebec at the expense of the Conservatives, who are running second to the Bloc Quebecois. The Liberals were at 21 per cent in Quebec, compared to 34 per cent for the Bloc, 27 per cent for the Tories, 10 per cent for the NDP and 6 per cent for the Greens.

Last week's 10-point lead for the Conservatives in Ontario shrank to five points, with the Tories at 38 per cent to the Liberals' 33 per cent and the NDP's 16 per cent.

The margin of error for provincial surveys is significantly higher because of smaller samples.

The poll also suggests the wide Conservative lead among urban and women voters contracted in recent days.

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 being held tomorrow, who do you think you would be voting for in your area?”