Lori Paris Reports on the latest Ipsos-Reid poll.

A Thanksgiving election hasn't been confirmed yet, but it does seem very likely that Canadians will be heading to the polls on October 14th.

Meantime, a new Ipsos-Reid poll for CFRB and Can West Global looks at how Canadians would vote if in fact an election were called.

Listen to Lori Paris' Report.

At the moment, Canadians are pretty evenly split when it comes to potential election issues, with the environment and health care both at 28 percent, and the economy at 26 percent.

But if Canadians were to vote based on the leader they think would be the best prime minister, Ipsos-Reid's Darrel Bricker says there is a clear front-runner.

"(Stephen) Harper is at 50 percent of Canadians saying they think he would be the best Prime Minister, followed by (Jack) Layton at 31 and finally by Stephan Dion at 20 percent."

Bricker adds the fact that Layton's growing popularity across Canada could make things interesting at the polls."

"That is a particularly scary thing for the Liberals, because the way the Liberals were able to come on strong in the last two elections was that near the end of the election campaign, they were able to frighten those soft NDP voters into voting Liberal in order to stop the Conservatives. And if (Canadians) are much happier with the NDP, and staying with them, then the Liberal party has very little opportunity to grow."

However, when asked which party leader has improved the most over the past few month, Layton came out on top at 18 percent, an increase of seven points, as opposed to Harper and Dion, who dropped 11 points and 16 points respectively.