Poll finds support for BC Conservatives sinking under Kerry-Lynne Findlay

A new poll has found that while support for the BC NDP remains the same, it is a different story for the BC Conservatives.

A little more than 100 days after Kerry-Lynne Findlay was elected as the leader of the BC Conservatives, support for the party is at 35 per cent, which is down eight points from the 2024 provincial election and 10 points behind the BC NDP, according to Ipsos.

“We have certainly seen political figures with very poor impression numbers in the past,” Kyle Braid, senior vice president of public affairs for Ipsos, said.

“I can never recall seeing a new leader have numbers this negative, this fast.”

This poll comes after a summer series of scandals that saw nine BC Conservative MLAs quit the party, many citing issues with Findlay’s leadership.

The Ipsos poll shows 46 per cent of British Columbians have an unfavourable impression of Findlay and 35 per cent have a very unfavourable one.

Seventeen per cent have a favourable impression.

“They thought they were going to get on track to be the heir apparent in the next election. They’ve gone the other way, they’ve gone in the wrong direction, and David Eby is probably licking his chops right now saying, maybe I can win this after all,” Mike McDonald, former chief of staff to Christy Clark, said.

There is a lot of speculation that Eby may try to take advantage of his opponent’s struggles and call an early election.

“Obviously we’ll keep all options open, but if we ever moved in that direction it would only be to ensure more stability for British Columbians,” Eby said in Toronto on Tuesday.

However, the NDP carries baggage of its own, including a record-high budget deficit revealed on Monday.

“If a campaign is called and they go into it, the NDP has a lot of explaining to do on its record, on the deficit, on hospital closures, on public safety,” Hamish Telford, a political science professor at the University of the Fraser Valley, said.

These are the findings of an Ipsos poll conducted Sept. 8 to 14, 2026. For this survey, a sample of 800 adult British Columbians were surveyed online with sample sourced through the Ipsos panel. Data was weighted by BC region, age, gender and education, in accordance with Census proportions. The precision of Ipsos online polls is measured using a credibility interval. In this case, the poll is accurate to within ±4.0 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. The credibility interval will be wider among subsets of the population. All sample surveys and polls may be subject to other sources of error, including, but not limited to coverage error, and measurement error.

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