Volume Nine, Number Three    May 2004    www.columbiajournal.ca

New Poll shows Growing support for Change in Government

CPP News Service

With a year to go until the next provincial election, a new Ipsos-Reid poll shows that the NDP now has a clear lead over the BC Liberals.

Currently, 44 per cent of decided British Columbians say they would support the NDP if an election were held tomorrow, while only 37 per cent would support the BC Liberals. Compared to March 2004, NDP support is up two points while Liberal support is down by the same amount, thereby widening the NDP’s lead over the Liberals from three to seven points.

More generally, this is the continuation of a trend of declining Liberal support and increasing NDP support that started after September 2003 when the parties stood at 45 per cent and 31 per cent support respectively.

Meanwhile, the fortunes of the Green Party seem to be waning as well, as they post their lowest level of support (11 per cent) since before the last election and are now nine points off their high of 20 per cent (May 2002).

The number of undecided voters is up slightly to 23 per cent from 20 per cent in March. “The NDP continues to be the beneficiary of a slow, but steady erosion in public confidence in the BC Liberals” says Kyle Braid, Vice-President of Ipsos-Reid in Vancouver. “The challenge for the Liberals over the next year is to give the public a reason why they deserve to be re-elected.”

There is a sizeable gender gap in support for both main parties. NDP support among women (49 per cent) is nine points higher than among men (40 per cent) while BC Liberal support is six points higher among men (40 per cent) than women (34 per cent). As of this wave, men are equally likely to support the Liberals (40 per cent) as they are the NDP (40 per cent)
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Regionally, the NDP and BC Liberals are in a statistical tie in the Lower Mainland (43 per cent to 40 per cent), while the NDP is far out front in the rest of the province (46 per cent to 33 per cent). BC Unity now has the support of nearly one-in-ten (8 per cent) decided voters outside the Lower Mainland.

Support for the NDP is highest among those aged 35-54 (51 per cent) while support for the BC Liberals is highest in the 18-34 age group (39 per cent) and the 55+ (41 per cent) age group.

These are the findings of an Ipsos-Reid poll conducted between May 4th and May 10th, 2004. The poll is based on a randomly selected sample of 800 adult British Columbians. With a sample of this size, the results are considered accurate to within ±3.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, of what they would have been had the entire adult British Columbian population been polled. The margin of error will be larger within regions and for other sub-groupings of the survey population. These data were statistically weighted to ensure the sample's regional and age/sex composition reflects that of the actual British Columbian population according to the 2001 Census.