Ouch!

One week into the campaign, and suspicion is increasing that Harper is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
QMI agency Michael Harris:

According to the latest Nanos tracking poll, Stephen Harper has managed something of a miracle: He has raised Michael Ignatieff from the political dead.. . . If Harper goes on to blow a near double-digit lead when this campaign began (either to win another minority or hand one to the other side), his substitution of messaging for communication will bear a large part of the responsibility. The prime minister uses language to create facts, not to convey them.

In the Globe and Mail, Adam Radwanski says

What Mr. Ignatieff is doing, with surprising effectiveness thus far, is challenging the campaign model that Mr. Harper and his strategists have turned into the modern orthodoxy.
In place of rigid message discipline, the Liberal Leader is venturing into any number of unscripted and unpredictable situations. He’s taking more questions from reporters and from the public than he needs to; he’s throwing himself at the mercy of hostile restaurant-goers; he’s laying down challenges to the Tory Leader over Twitter.
Having seemed previously to lack stamina, Mr. Ignatieff appears to be actively enjoying the rigours of the hustings. And that sense of energy is rubbing off, not least on media looking to turn a potentially dreary campaign into a more compelling story.