B.C. voters planning to push Harper's Tories out of office: election poll
OTTAWA - Another poll is suggesting that Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives are about to be pummelled by B.C. voters in the October election.
The new Insights West online survey of 815 British Columbians suggests a strong animosity in the province towards the notion of a re-elected Conservative government.
The online survey of 815 British Columbians said 75 per cent of decided respondents, including close to half (43 per cent) of those who voted Tory in 2011, say it’s time for a change.
“In addition, 60 per cent of British Columbians say they would be ‘very upset’ if the Tories form the government again. The level of animosity towards a possible victory by either the Liberal Party or the NDP is significantly smaller (36 per cent and 33 per cent respectively),” according to Insight West.
The four-day online poll, which concluded Monday, said 41 per cent of decided voters would vote for the New Democratic Party if an election were being held now.
That compares with 24 per cent favouring the Liberals, 22 per cent the Conservatives, and 12 per cent Elizabeth May’s Green Party.
If valid, the results would confirm University of B.C. political scientist Richard Johnston’s recent comment to The Vancouver Sun that “there’s a B.C. thing going on about Harper.”
The poll is consistent with recent data from various firms collected by CBC poll analyst Eric Grenier.
His website, threehundredeight.com, has the NDP at 39.8 per cent in B.C., compared to 25.3 per cent for the Liberals, 23.1 per cent for the Conservatives, 10.7 per cent for the Greens, and one per cent for “other.”
If those numbers held up it would result in an all-time best performance for the federal NDP, which took a record 37 per cent of the vote and the majority of B.C. seats in the 1988 election.
Grenier’s seat projection model suggests that these numbers would translate into an NDP landslide, taking 25 of the province’s 42 seats.
The Liberals would be second with 11 seats, the Conservatives third with five, and the Greens fourth with May’s Saanich-Gulf Islands seat.
That would be a dramatic reversal from 2011, when the Conservatives took 21 of 36 seats with 45.6 per cent of the vote, the NDP a dozen with 32.5, the Liberals just two with 13.4, and the Greens a singleton with 7.7.
However, a more conservative seat projection model used by The Sun earlier this month, using similar polling data, showed a strong, though somewhat less robust, performance by the NDP and indicated the Tories will hang on to more of their traditional ridings.
On leadership, the NDP’s Tom Mulcair has the highest approval rating, at 55 per cent, followed by May at 52 per cent, Trudeau at 51 per cent, and Harper at just 28 per cent.
While this poll points to a powerful NDP showing in October, the results are also sure to boost Green spirits.
The Greens show considerable strength in the sub-sample of Vancouver Island respondents, with 32 per cent of respondents saying they’d vote Green compared to the poll-leading NDP’s 39 per cent.
And May, praised for her performance in the first leaders’ debate, showed the most momentum, with 20 per cent of British Columbians saying their opinion of her improved since the campaign began, compared to nine per cent saying it has worsened.
Harper has by far the worst score on that front, with 50 per cent of respondents saying their opinion of him has worsened.
Insights West said the error margin for such a poll, involving respondents weighted to be consistent with Statistics Canada’s figures on factors such as age and gender, is 3.1 percentage points.
However, many pollsters who do online polls do not claim a margin of error, since the pollster is not taking a random sample from the general population. Instead, the pollster is studying the views of people who have agreed to participate, often in return for financial benefits of some sort.
