After one of the more bizarre weeks in British Columbia politics comes a bit of good news for the downtrodden governing Liberals.
It appears the public doesn't completely and utterly despise them after all. In fact, the first poll to be taken since Premier Gordon Campbell's resignation announcement shows his party within striking distance of the New Democrats. Even better, perhaps, the NDP appears to be on the verge of imploding.
The poll, released on Friday, contained a dreadful approval rating for NDP Leader Carole James, whose leadership it can now be said is under serious attack. Her caucus whip, Katrine Conroy, announced on Friday that she is resigning her position, a move evidently linked to Ms. James' decision to expel outspoken MLA Bob Simpson from caucus last month. Caucus chair Norm Macdonald resigned his position earlier in protest over the same issue. And a handful of other NDP MLAs are bad-mouthing the leader behind her back.
This prompted Ms. James to concede on Friday that some members of her caucus are out to destroy her and her party.
The Liberals surely can't believe their luck. And these new polling numbers have them smiling now.
Asked by the Mustel Group polling firm who they would vote for if an election were held tomorrow, 42 per cent of those surveyed said the NDP, 37 per cent Liberal, 10 per cent Green Party and nine per cent the B.C. Conservatives. Three per cent said other.
The random sampling of 502 adults had a plus or minus rating of 4.4 per cent, which means, of course, that the two main parties could be neck and neck or the NDP's margin over the Liberals could be significantly greater and in landslide range.
On the leadership question, the numbers offer a dramatically different outlook than a poll conducted by Angus Reid a couple of months ago that showed Mr. Campbell's support at an all-time low of nine per cent. The Mustel poll puts it at a far more respectable 32 per cent, only a point behind that of Ms. James.
The 33 per cent approval rating for the Opposition Leader is a drop from 42 per cent in the last survey, in September. Her disapproval rating, meantime, has rocketed to 45 per cent from 36.
The NDP's provincial council is meeting on Saturday to discuss a number of issues, including the calls by a small group of riding associations for a leadership review. Ms. James made it clear on Friday that unless she gets an appropriate level of support from the party at that meeting she might step down.
Unbelievable.
For the Liberals, the who-would-you-vote-for number is a jump of four percentage points from Mustel's September poll, when Mr. Campbell was still firmly at the helm and dropping no hints of leaving. The NDP's number stayed the same from the previous poll.
So what do we take from all this?
Well, the bottom line is that if these numbers were to hold up until the next election, the NDP would win a significant majority. The party can take some heart in that. But what's disturbing is that the Liberals are going to elect a new leader, and depending on how well that person does in persuading the public he or she represents change at the top of government, the party could quite easily close the gap and win another election.
And that should put a bounce in the step of those planning on running for the job.
The Liberals are lucky the B.C. Conservatives don't have anything resembling a charismatic leader promoting a policy platform that resonates with a wider swath of the populace. The party is at nine per cent in the Mustel poll with almost zero visibility.
The Liberals, and the Social Credit party before them, are a coalition of Liberals and Conservatives. It's only when that coalition has fallen apart that the NDP has been elected in B.C.
What is phenomenal, really, is how steady the NDP's core constituency has remained over the years, except for 2001, when even many of the party's closest supporters couldn't vote for it. Otherwise, support for the province's centre-left alternative has remained in the 38 per cent to 42 per cent range, which is never enough to win an election.
That is where it remains stuck in this latest poll and that should be a concern.
If a new Liberal leader can somehow assuage the concerns of Conservatives in the province, and win some of that support back, we have a new ball game. But one with an old, familiar result. And if that happens, there will have to be a massive reckoning in the NDP that will need to involve more than just a leadership change.
Of course, polls are just snapshots at a given point in time. With a Liberal leadership race about to commence, and the provincial government soon have a new person leading it, the numbers could bounce around quite a bit in the months ahead.
One thing, however, seems certain. The biggest drag on the Liberals' popularity is gone. The party now has new hope and life.
Gary Mason