New B.C. Liberal leader could boost polls

The B.C. Liberals will likelyget a huge jump in the polls once they have a new leader in place, according to asurvey released on Friday morning.

The Angus Reid poll was conducted on Tuesday, the day beforePremier Gordon Campbell announced his resignation. It suggested the NDP was enjoying 47 per cent support provincewide.

But that support dropped to 32 per cent for the NDP if a new Liberal leader were in place before the next election, according to the pollsters. In that scenario, Liberal support rose from a meresix per cent withCampbell to 28 per cent without him.

The poll also suggested the Conservative Party has seen a slight bump in support, pulling even with the Greens with 10 per cent support provincewide.

The poll was conducted with a controlled survey of 807 randomly selected members of Angus Reid's pool of online panelists and is considered accurate within a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

No Liberals top poll

Anotherpoll, conductedby Ipsos Reidafter Campbells surprise resignation announcement, suggests the three most popular possible leaders for the Liberals are notsitting members of the legislature.

The poll asked respondents to rate their impressions of 14 possible leaders as either positive, negative, neutral or 'never heard of the person,' and only three names got overall positive results.

Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts had 43 per cent positive impressions versus 13 per cent negative impressions, giving her what Ipsos Reid calls a net impression score ofplus 30.

Former provincial finance ministerCarole Taylor was next best with a score of plus 21, followed closely by Vancouver Olympic Games CEO John Furlong at plus 19.

Chuck Strahl, the federal Conservative transport minister, was next best with a net score of minus 9, followed by former provincial education minister Christy Clark at minus 14.

Among current Liberal cabinet members, Bill Bennett rated best at minus16, while Finance Minister Colin Hansen ratedworst at minus 41.

The survey, conducted online using a sample of 600 members of Ipsos Reid's pool of 6,500 British Columbian panellists, claims a 95 per cent likelihood of being accurate within four percentage points.