Latest polling numbers in BC

Political polls are more about entertainment that hard data on what the public thinks, but as a political junkie I can not resist them even though I know how low quality the data is.

We have had a long period of no provincial polls in BC then we got one at the start of December from Insights West and another at the end of January from Justason Market Intelligence

Pollster      Date  Libs NDP Green BCCP oth Sample Size 
Justason     Jan 19 37   35   19    7    1   600
Insights West Dec 3 40   36   14    6    3   866
2013 election       44.1 39.7  8.1  4.8  3.3

The most interesting change is the rise in Green party support.  The 19% result in the most recent Justason poll is a new high for the BC Greens.   Interesting is that it is the Liberals who have dropped the most in support but neither the BC Conservatives nor the NDP have seen a significant benefit from that.

If the numbers from Justason are broadly like what the next election turns out to be, here is how I think it plays out, keeping in mind there will be new boundaries

• Liberals 41 or 42
• NDP 38
• Greens 4 or 5
• Ind 1
• BCCP 0

BC NDP gains one interior seat and five Lower Mainland seats - they lose two seats to the Greens
Greens gain two Victoria area seats and one up island seats.  Possibly one interior seat
Liberals lose one or two interior seats, one up island seat and five lower mainland seats
BCCP remains at zero

It is still a long way till the 2017 election and only one of the four parties has their leader in place so everything has to be taken with a grain of salt.