Eby Called the Election. Now His Own Voters Are Less Certain to Show Up.
The final-week question is no longer just who is ahead. It is whether David Eby can get a softer, less certain NDP vote to the ballot box after choosing this election clock himself.
Angus Reid’s final-week B.C. election survey turns David Eby’s snap-election gamble into a turnout-risk story. The topline is close: among decided and leaning voters, the BC Conservatives sit at 46 per cent and the BC NDP at 43 per cent. Angus Reid describes that three-point spread as a statistical tie. That alone should end any NDP attempt to treat the result as inevitable.
The harder number for Eby is certainty. Angus Reid found 73 per cent of BC Conservative voters say they are “very certain” of their vote, compared with 54 per cent of BC NDP voters. In a final week with advance voting already underway, that is not a footnote. It is the campaign’s practical problem: persuasion matters, but turnout mechanics matter too.
Retention tells the same story. Angus Reid reports 89 per cent of 2024 BC Conservative voters are staying with the party, while 74 per cent of 2024 BC NDP voters are returning to the New Democrats. That does not predict the outcome. It does show the incumbent party carrying more leakage and softer support at exactly the moment ballots are being cast.
Eby also cannot hide behind personal inevitability. On the survey’s “best premier” measure, Angus Reid puts Lorne Doerkson at 36 per cent, Eby at 34 per cent, and 30 per cent saying neither. Again, that is not a mandate. It is a warning light for a premier who asked voters for a decision two years early.
None of this means anyone should stay home. The opposite is true. Elections BC says advance voting runs from Friday, October 16 through Wednesday, October 21, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. local time, and final voting day is Saturday, October 24. The neutral civic instruction is simple: vote. The accountability instruction is just as simple: take the record into the voting booth.
Eby chose the timing. He chose the compressed calendar. He chose to ask British Columbians for another mandate before the normal election date. Now an independent poll says the race is tied, his voters are less locked in, his party is retaining less of its last-election vote, and nearly a third of respondents pick neither major leader as best premier.
That is the real final-week ledger. The NDP can still ask for trust. Voters can still ask why a government confident in its record needed an early election, and why its own supporters now look less certain than the voters lined up against it.