The federal Conservative Party continued to incrementally widen its lead over the federal Liberal Party, according to a new Angus Reid Strategies poll.

“Despite his advertising Ignatieff has not been able to close the leadership gap with Harper,” said Jodi Shanoff, of Angus Reid Strategies, in a release.

“The threat of an election has only increased the Conservative lead," Shanoff said. A confidence vote scheduled for this Thursday.

The Angus Reid Strategies/Toronto Star poll found the following voter intentions:

Conservatives: up one point to 37%

Liberals: holding steady at 29%

New Democrats: down one to 16%

Bloc Québécois: down one to 9%

Green Party: up one to 8%

All four major party leader scored negative momentum in the online poll. Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff’s momentum is worse than Harper’s for the first time since Angus Reid Strategies been asking this question with Ignatieff as leader.

Michael Ignatieff: -32

Stephen Harper: –20

Jack Layton: -10

Gilles Duceppe: -6.

Poll respondents described Harper as secretive (45%), boring (44%), and intelligent (43%).

They described Ignatieff as arrogant (51%), intelligent (46%) and out of touch (39%).

These results are drawn from an online survey of 997 randomly selected Canadian adults conducted on Sept. 23 and 24, 2009. The margin of error—which measures sampling variability—is +/- 3.1 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

Monte Paulsen reports on politics and policy for The Tyee.