The Conservative Party of British Columbia has been without a permanent leader since the resignation of John Rustad last year, and won’t have a new head until the party gathers to vote one in at the end of May. But even in this condition it has opened a 10-point lead over the governing New Democrats, a new Angus Reid poll found .
Poll numbers going back to December of 2024 find the New Democrats and Conservatives consistently jockeying for supremacy in voter intent, with both in the low 40s and never more than three percentage points between them. But the latest numbers show the Conservatives with 46 per cent of support among decided or leaning voters, while the NDP has dropped to 36 per cent.
The latest poll also found that support for NDP Premier David Eby has fallen from 53 per cent last March to just 33 per cent today.
Angus Reid also looked at public opposition to the province’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA), which all five Conservative leadership hopefuls have said they would repeal if they formed a government in B.C.
Passed into law in 2019, DRIPA uses a similar UN declaration as the province’s framework for Indigenous reconciliation, and mandates that it bring provincial laws into alignment with that document, as well as develop and implement an action plan in consultation with Indigenous peoples.
It has proven unwieldy and unpopular . Almost half (47 per cent) of British Columbians support a repeal of the legislation, including more than a quarter (26 per cent) of those who voted NDP in the last provincial election in 2024.
The poll also found a sharp split on the question on whether the province has done enough work on reconciliation. Two in five respondents (41 per cent) said enough had been done, while 34 per cent said there was still much to do, and 17 per cent said there was still a little to do. Eight per cent weren’t sure.
Additionally, 55 per cent of those polled said they thought Eby had done a bad or very bad job balancing Aboriginal land rights and private property rights, a number that swelled to 83 per cent among Conservative voters.
There was also confusion over whether DRIPA allows First Nations to veto land development in the province, with 39 per cent saying it does, 26 per cent saying it does not, and more than a third (35 per cent) saying they just didn’t know.
As to whether the province would be better or worse off economically in a future under DRIPA, a slim majority (51 per cent) said it would be worse off or much worse off. That number was even higher among those who claimed to be be familiar with the legislation, with 60 per cent in the “worse” camp.
The poll noted that Eby had told First Nations leaders in April that he planned to suspend DRIPA for up to three years, before backing down amid anger from that group.
“This has been, if I can speak frankly, probably the most challenging issue I’ve worked on in government,” Eby said at the time. “It is absolutely possible, as a leader, to move off confidently in the wrong direction.”
The Angus Reid Institute conducted the online survey from April 24 to 28 among a randomized sample of 804 adult B.C. residents. A sample of this size would carry a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
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