The NDP would win the popular vote in B.C. if a federal election were held tomorrow, according to a new poll, but the party will need to learn from Rachel Notley’s example in Alberta if it wants to turn the province orange.
A new survey from Insights West found that 35 per cent of decided voters in this province would cast their vote for the New Democrats, compared to 29 per cent for the Conservatives and 25 per cent for the Liberals.
NDP leader Thomas Mulcair fared particularly well in the poll, earning a 52-per-cent approval rating, edging out Liberal leader Justin Trudeau’s 46 per cent and trouncing Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s 35 per cent.
“I think people are starting to warm up to what he’s going to bring to the table. He’s no longer being viewed as this aloof person who’s in Quebec,” pollster Mario Canseco said of Mulcair.
“He’s now on course to get more votes than what Jack Layton got in the last election here, so that’s definitely something that should make him happy.”
The poll numbers mark just a slight improvement for the NDP compared to the 2011 election, when they earned 32.5 per cent of the popular vote, but the Conservatives saw a huge drop from the 45.6-per-cent support they saw four years ago. Much of that support appears to have been sucked up by the Liberals, who have seen a remarkable recovery under Trudeau from their paltry 13.4-per-cent backing last time around.
The New Democrats may have benefited from a bit of a “Notley bump” in this poll, which was conducted just days after the NDP’s surprising majority win in last week’s Alberta election, Canseco acknowledged.
But even though Mulcair leads in the approval ratings, he still trails Stephen Harper as the best choice for prime minister by a five-point margin in this survey (22 per cent of those surveyed versus 27 per cent for Harper.)
The challenge for Mulcair will be to prove that he’s more than just an effective opposition leader, according to Canseco. He has to prove he can lead the country to get the votes of people who’ve backed Harper for the last two or three elections.
“Can you actually turn them to go from blue to orange? I think people thought it was impossible, but it happened in Alberta,” he said.
The poll also shows a small increase in support for the Green party to 10 per cent of decided voters from 7.7 per cent in the last election. Party leader Elizabeth May proved to be quite popular, earning a 44-per-cent approval rating.
In hindsight, Canseco wishes that he’d waited to conduct this poll until after May’s bizarre speech at the press gallery dinner this weekend, when she announced that Omar Khadr has “more class than the whole f-----g cabinet.” But ultimately he doesn’t believe that the spectacle would put a dent in her support.
“The Green voter probably agrees with most of what she said about the government, albeit not with the language she used,” Canseco said.
“It’s a very different kind of voter. But it might scare people away from the Greens, people who might have been thinking of voting for the Greens.”
The Greens are seeing the biggest support on Vancouver Island, where 20 per cent of those polled said they’d vote for May’s party.
The survey also asked voters about the most important issues facing Canada, and found that the economy and jobs are still tops in most people’s minds (30 per cent), followed by government accountability (22 per cent) and health care (15 per cent).
But among those aged 18-34, another issue surged close to the top of the list: housing, poverty and homelessness. Twenty per cent of young people surveyed said this was the most important issue in the country.
Canseco said the numbers are particularly high in Metro Vancouver, where young people are having a rough time finding good jobs and getting into the increasingly expensive housing market. A smart federal leader would look to the example of Barack Obama, who travelled the U.S. talking to young people about issues like paying down student debt.
“They’re having all these difficulties with the lives that they were promised when they graduated from university,” Canseco said.
“The one way that you can engage with this group of people is to talk about some of the opportunities that you will be creating for them.”
The Insights West results are based on an online survey of 814 British Columbians conducted from May 7 to 9. The margin of error is +/- 3.1 percentage points.
Some highlights of the Insights West poll:
Stephen Harper’s Conservatives didn’t earn a single approval rating above 50 per cent when B.C. voters were asked whether the ruling party is doing a good job on key issues. Here’s where they performed the worst:
• Government accountability — 71-per-cent disapproval
• Housing, poverty and homelessness — 64-per-cent disapproval
• Environment m — 62-per-cent disapproval
• Health care — 57-per-cent disapproval
• Energy and pipelines — 56-per-cent disapproval
Most likely to support the NDP:
• Among Vancouver Island residents — 47 per cent of decided voters
• Among young people aged 18-34 — 42 per cent of decided voters
• Among women — 40 per cent of decided voters
Most likely to support the Conservatives:
• Among people over the age of 55 — 36 per cent of decided voters
• Among men — 34 per cent of decided voters
• Among people who live anywhere but Vancouver Island — 32 per cent of decided voters
