Metro giving Liberals a boost against NDP, latest poll shows
Greens hit 20 per cent support across B.C. among decided and leaning voters
The latest weekly B.C. election tracking poll shows the gap closing between the governing Liberals and the NDP Opposition in Metro Vancouver and the Greens making gains, especially on Vancouver Island.
The Mainstreet-Postmedia poll also found more voters are in favour of the Liberals’ plan to cap bridge tolls at $500 a year than the NDP’s election promise to scrap them.
And the poll, the first since the writ dropped to kick off the campaign for the May 9 provincial election, also found the most popular campaign promise — doubling the foreign buyers’ tax to 30 per cent — is not identified with the party that floated the idea, the Greens.
Across B.C., the NDP have the most “decided and leaning ” voters, at 39 per cent, followed by the Liberals at 37 per cent and the Greens at 21 per cent.
Among all voters, the Liberals (30 per cent, up five percentage points from previous poll) trail the NDP (32 per cent, no change), with the Greens at 15 per cent (up three), the leaderless Conservatives at three per cent (down three) and undecided voters at 19 per cent (down six).
For the past three polls, the NDP has remained between 37 and 39 per cent, the Liberals at 33 to 37 per cent, the Greens between 13 to 17 per cent and the Conservatives between 10 and 13 per cent.
In the latest poll, most of the Liberal gains have come in Metro Vancouver. The Liberals have closed the gap there, coming to within five percentage points of the NDP among decided and leaning voters. The NDP has 43 per cent of those voters to the Liberals’ 38.
Those Liberal gains came as the number of undecided voters dropped sharply among all voters to 21 per cent cent, down from 30 per cent the poll before.
“It looks like a lot of those undecideds broke to the Liberals,” said David Valentin, executive vicepresident of Mainstreet Research.
He said the Greens — among decided and leaning voters — have finally hit 20 per cent across B.C. In that category, the Green party has the highest support on Vancouver Island, with 38 per cent, compared with the NDP’s 34 per cent and the Liberals’ 26 per cent.
“In Greater Vancouver, the Greens are taking more from the Liberals than the NDP,” Valentin said. “The Greens seem to be gaining from different parties in different parts of the province.”
Respondents were asked about campaign promises and there were two newsworthy results, on bridge tolls and the foreign buyers’ tax.
Even though the Greens have promised to double the foreign buyers’ tax from 15 per cent, twice as many more respondents thought the NDP (31 per cent) came up with the idea than thought the Green party (15 per cent) did.
And 39 per cent weren’t sure who promised it. But 44 per cent of all voters liked the idea of a 30 per cent foreign buyers’ tax, the poll found.
The Liberals say they’ll cap bridge tolls at $500 year, and the NDP vowed to lift all tolls on the Port Mann and Golden Ears bridges.
The Mainstreet poll showed 45 per cent of voters prefer capping to scrapping.
The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.41 percentage points 19 times out of 20. It’s based on a random sample of 1,650 B.C. eligible voters from April 12 to 14.
The surveys were conducted with interactive voice respond polls, also known as “robo polls,” to landlines and cellphones.
In 2013, former NDP leader Adrian Dix’s party had a 15-point edge early on in that race but the Liberals won the election weeks later by four points.