As voters gear up to head to the polls in just 10 days, a new survey is casting it’s assumptions for which party could come out victoriously and which party leader’s message is landing on the ears of British Columbians.
The survey asked more than 800 BC residents of voting age ahead of the October 19 election who they would want as the new premier of BC if they had to vote today.
Fairview Strategy
The majority said they would go with former premier David Eby, with 64% saying they were “very certain.” When asked which party overall, respondents weren’t as certain.
The Fairview Strategy’s survey also revealed that it might be partly due to many respondents saying that Eby’s message was landing better than Rustad’s, with many of his campaign policies leaving respondents feeling optimistic. Those messages include housing, health, and tax policies.
However, respondents did share that some of the messaging had a less-than-positive outlook. Those unfavourable keywords included speculation, carbon tax, and flopping.
Rustad’s carbon tax messaging has alternatively come off more favourably, according to those polled, and his drug policies and conservative economics were also apparently more popular. His less positive messaging included words like healthcare, plastic, vaccines, and ICBC.
The Fairview Strategy survey was conducted over the weekend, before Tuesday night’s first and only televised leaders’ debate in which thousands of voters tuned in to hear BC Green Party leader Sonia Furstenau, Conservative Party of BC leader John Rustad, and BC NDP leader David Eby face-off on a variety of high-pressure issues in the province.
While the survey didn’t capture voters’ reactions to that debate, many online shared their thoughts, and we rounded up many of them here.
The survey comes in the wake of another survey, this time by Leger, which showed the NDP had been seeing a surge of support, and had overtaken the Conservatives despite earlier polls saying they were neck-in-neck.
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Methodology: Results are based on a survey conducted online of 806 British Columbia residents aged 18+. Data was collected from October 4th to October 6th, 2024. Final results were weighted to reflect the most recent Canadian census statistics for age, gender, and regions of British Columbia. Margins of error: +/- 3.4% at 95% confidence. Sub-samples will have greater margins of error.