Poll puts B.C. NDP, Liberals in dead heat

A new poll has put the B.C. Liberals and the NDP in a dead heat for voter support with 36 per cent support for each, as the two parties race to replace their leaders.

Support for the Liberals has increased 10 per cent since Premier Gordon Campbell announced his resignation, while support for the NDP has dropped 11 per cent in the past month, according to a poll by Angus Reid Public Opinion.

Pollster Mario Canseco said he's never seen this big a shift in public opinion in just one month.

Canseco believes the NDP's internal problems are part of the reason the party has lost a 21-point lead in one month, but notesCampbell's resignation may have played a bigger roll in return of Liberal support.

"It's almost as if the base is back. They were waiting for Campbell to leave and now they said, 'Oh, we're back,'" he said.

The race is now on to capture swing voters in the middle of the political spectrum, said Canseco.

"So it's really up to who can actually do things better and get those votes from the centre because right now they have their base back and it's a whole new ball game," he said.

The poll also suggests that the Green Party is in third place with 14 per cent support, followed by the B.C. Conservatives with six per cent.

Clark leads Liberal leadership race

The poll suggested that Christy Clark would be the most popular choice for B.C. voters amongst the Liberal leadership candidates, with 41 per cent saying she would be good choice, followed by Kevin Falcon with 29 per cent, Mike de Jong with 27 per cent, George Abbott with 24 per cent and Moira Stilwell with eight per cent.

For the NDP, B.C. voters picked Mike Farnworth as the most popular choice to replace retiring leader Carole James, with 34 per cent support, followed by Jenny Kwan with 27 per cent, and Adrian Dix with 22 per cent. But so far none of those potential leaders have officially entered the party's leadership race.

The poll also suggested that 64 per cent of those surveyed plan to vote to get rid of the HST, but pollster Mario Canseco noted that for the second month in a row support for the tax has been slowly increasing.

The poll was conductedDec. 7-8,using an online survey of 804 randomly selected B.C. adults from the Angus Reid Public Opinion's forum of panellists, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.