Call it a new campaign, next phase or an election finally beginning in earnest. Regardless of label, the Conservatives now have momentum and the Liberals are struggling to re-establish theirs.

There has been a spate of polls since Dec. 27 when news broke of a formal RCMP criminal investigation into possible leaks of the Liberals’ income trust policy in November. Some leave the Liberals with a wafer thin lead over the Conservatives. At least one gives the Conservatives a tiny lead. Another shows a statistical tie.

But when margins of error are factored in, the two parties are in a dead heat.

Still the Liberals are hanging on to a lead in Ontario, albeit greatly reduced.

However, the NDP appears to be a major recipient of the shrinkage from the Liberals. This may mean many NDP voters in Ontario have accepted the inevitability of a Conservative government and are no longer willing to vote strategically for the Liberals.

This would be a repeat of 1984 and 1988 when centrist and left-leaning voters wrote off John Turner’s Liberals.

But those NDP votes in Ontario could still turn out to be a parking lot for the Liberals at the last minute.

It is not surprising that sudden news of an RCMP criminal investigation involving a sitting government would spark a shift in the polls just as the interim Gomery report in November and the Auditor General’s findings on the sponsorship scandal in 2004 cost the Liberals dearly.

The Liberals, however, have been able to recovery quickly from this sort of visceral voter outrage, particularly with Gomery this fall. In the income trust controversy, we are talking after all about suspicions and rumours at this point. Without anything substantive to report on this case, the media will lose interest shortly and the Liberals can still recover.

Some voters may even question why the RCMP chose Christmas week to announce a criminal investigation into the government. The last time there was anything comparable to this was when the 1989 budget was leaked.

That time the RCMP not only chose not to investigate the government of the day but charged the reporter who broke the story instead for theft. The theft charge was eventually thrown out when an Ontario judge found the RCMP was being overzealous.

The Liberals appear to believe the sudden spike in Opposition support is transitory. Instead of changing tactics, the Liberals opened this week with the same tactic of scare stories, comparing Harper to Mike Harris.

It will be interesting to see if the Liberals continue to rely on strategy they used successfully in 2004.