Premier has highest approval rating of any B.C. leader in past 8 years, poll suggests

Support for Premier John Horgan is at the highest point reached by any political leader in B.C. in the eight years pollster Insights West has been conducting surveys.

Horgan's approval rating now sits at 68 per cent, which is 17 points higher than seven months ago.

B.C. Liberal leader Andrew Wilkinson's rating has dropped five points since November and is now at 30 per cent, according to the results of an online survey of 830 B.C. residents.

Insights West president Steve Mossop says the results appear to be a strong endorsement of Horgan's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which nearly a third of British Columbians surveyed say is currently the No. 1 issue in the province.

"One of the side-effects of the pandemic is that British Columbians, and in the same vein, most Canadians, are rallying behind their leaders over the past several months," Mossop said.

"Approval ratings for government actions have been among the highest among hundreds of public initiatives we have covered in our polling over the years."

If an election were held today, 47 per cent of respondents say they would vote for the NDP.

Only 29 per cent of respondents say they would cast a ballot for the B.C. Liberals, the lowest figure for the party since the 2017 election.

Support for the Greens and Conservatives has also fallen since November.

The study was conducted June 24-28, 2020.

A comparable margin of error for a probability-based sample of this size would be +/- 3.4 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.