BC Conservatives move from fractured to front runners, new poll finds

A new Ipsos poll shows that while the BC Conservatives appeared in disarray one month ago, they have now gained a five-point lead over the BC NDP.

The poll, conducted in partnership with Global BC, shows the BC Conservatives have the support of 43 per cent of decided voters, which puts them five-points ahead of the BC NDP, which have 38 per cent of support.

The BC Green Party is up one point, now sitting at 11 per cent, followed by OneBC at four per cent and CentreBC at two per cent.

The poll found that 18 per cent of voters are still undecided and seven per cent have no preference for which party is in power.

“The BC Conservatives are now up on the NDP by five points,” Kyle Braid, senior vice president of Ipsos, said on Tuesday morning.

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“And if anything, their lead is firming up and expanding. And so if it wasn’t obvious before, it’s very clear now from these numbers that calling this election an early election might turn out to be a giant miscalculation.”

2:01 Ipsos poll shows slight lead for BC Conservatives

The race remains very close in Metro Vancouver, however, with the BC Conservatives leading by three points with 42 per cent, while the BC NDP has 39 per cent, but the NDP does have a substantial lead on Vancouver Island with 47 per cent to the BC Conservatives’ 27 per cent, according to those polled.

The BC Conservatives have a 21-point lead in the Southern Interior and in the northern part of the province, with 53 per cent to the BC NDP’s 32 per cent.

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“The Conservatives are doing really well with men,” Braid said.

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“The gender gap that we often see in B.C. has returned, so the Conservatives lead by big margins with men, the NDP with women, the Conservatives are doing really well with the 35- to 54-year-old age group, and of course, as always, they’re doing really well in the Interior and north of the province.”

Nearly one in four voters, 23 per cent, who say they have a current party preference said there is still a “good chance” they will change their mind and vote for some other party’s candidate in the election.

The poll also found that half of residents, which is up slightly from the previous poll, believe it is time for another provincial party to take over, with that number now at 50 per cent.

Three-in-10, 31 per cent, of residents continue to say the Eby government has done a good job and deserves re-election.

Two-in-10 people, 19 per cent, are undecided.

“There’s probably about 25 per cent of the voters who are still up for grabs,” Braid said.

“Some of them undecided, some of them have a choice now but are not certain of it, so that’s a fairly large number at this point of the campaign. Some of that is driven by the fact that the Conservative Party is kind of new, different than the Conservative Party we had in the last election and they also have a new leader.”

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When it comes to the favourability of the leaders, Eby continues to come out ahead at 35 per cent viewing him favourably, with BC Conservative Leader Lorne Doerkson sitting at 26 per cent. However, Eby’s unfavourable rating is at 38 per cent, while Doerkson’s is at 24 per cent, according to the poll.

“The leadership question is an open one here,” Braid said.

“People just know David Eby, and his numbers actually are not that bad. We’ve seen premiers and politicians have numbers that are in the 50 or 60 per cent negatives. He’s got almost as many favorables as unfavorables, so they’re still open to hearing from David Eby. They just don’t know Lorne Doerkson yet, which suggests that the debate that’s coming up is going to be extremely important.”

1:21 BC election campaign heating up online

British Columbians will have the opportunity to hear from the three major party leaders ahead of the provincial election on Oct. 24.

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The B.C. provincial leaders’ debate will take place on Wednesday, Oct. 14, from 6:15 p.m. to 8 p.m. and will be live on Global BC, BC1 and online.

Eby, Doerkson and BC Green Party leader Emily Lowan will be taking part.

Shachi Kurl, president of the Angus Reid Institute, will be the moderator.

“David Eby has two tasks in the leaders’ debate,” Braid said.

“One is to create some sense of risk for people for electing a BC Conservative government. And the other is to try to persuade some of those voters who are considering either the NDP or the Greens that a vote for the NDP is the correct choice.

“Lorne Doerkson’s main thing is simply to introduce himself to voters in the province. Most people don’t know him. The other thing is quite simply just to stand up and look like a premier. That’s it.”

These are the findings of an Ipsos poll conducted in partnership with Global BC from Oct. 7 to 11, 2026. For this survey, a sample of 1,356 adult British Columbians were surveyed both online through sample sourced through the Ipsos panel (n=1,001) and by phone with live interviewers (n=350) using both cellphones and landlines. Data was weighted by B.C. region, age, gender and education, in accordance with Census proportions. The precision of Ipsos polls, including online samples, is measured using a credibility interval. In this case, the overall poll is accurate to within ±3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. Questions asked only of online respondents are accurate to within ±3.7 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.