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Two-thirds of British Columbians do not believe what Premier Gordon Campbell says about the HST and a majority doubt his credibility even when he is talking about government initiatives in education, an Angus Reid poll has found.

Only 6 per cent of British Columbians would vote Liberal in the next election if Mr. Campbell were party leader, according to the survey taken this week before he announced his resignation.

However, the Liberal Party's prospects would improve considerably if Mr. Campbell resigned, the poll showed. The Liberals would be competitive with the NDP if the party had a different leader.

Mr. Campbell said Thursday that polling played no part in his decision to step aside. "I have never been driven by polls. I have always tried to act on the basis of what is in the best interest of the province," he told reporters. He decided to resign in order to shift attention from his personal popularity to the economy and policies of the provincial government, he said.

Mr. Campbell unveiled the second biggest income tax cut in B.C. history last week during a televised address to the province in which he also defended the government's decision to harmonize the federal and provincial sales taxes in B.C. and announced new education initiatives.

Mario Canseco, vice-president of public affairs for Angus Reid Public Opinion, said he was not aware if Mr. Campbell or the Liberals had done any polling between the address to the province and the decision to resign.

However, his poll shows that the Liberal Party could bring back a lot of its supporters by having a different leader, Mr. Canseco said. "When you take Gordon Campbell out of the equation, it becomes a race again. So it really depends on who is going to become the leader," he said in an interview.

Mr. Campbell's resignation is bad news for the NDP, Mr. Canseco added. "They no longer have Gordon Campbell to be their whipping boy," he said. "They have lost the one person that actually helped them immensely, because of the animosity that people felt toward him."

Mr. Campbell's address to the province had virtually no impact on his personal popularity and support for his Liberal government, according to the Angus Reid poll.

Mr. Campbell's dismal personal popularity in the poll was in sharp contrast to the reaction to the announcement of a 15-per-cent tax cut. The poll found that 65 per cent of British Columbians supported the tax cut.

However, 65 per cent of British Columbians said their opinion of Mr. Campbell had worsened over the past three months. Only 12 per cent approved of his performance, an increase of three percentage points from 9 per cent last month.

The poll found that support for the Liberals with a different leader jumped to 28 per cent, from 6 per cent with Mr. Campbell. That would put the party in spitting distance of the NDP, which had the support of 32 per cent of British Columbians who would like to see them form the government after the next provincial election, which will be held in May, 2013. The rest of those polled were undecided.

On Mr. Campbell's credibility, the poll found that 66 per cent of British Columbians were not convinced by his remarks when he discussed the decision to bring in the harmonized sales tax; 58 per cent expected the B.C. government not to deliver on its pledge to ensure that every Grade 4 student is reading, writing and doing math at Grade 4 level by 2015.

The poll also signaled that the referendum on the HST, slated for Sept. 24, 2011, is heading for defeat. Sixty-six per cent said they intended to vote to abolish the tax, with the opposition rising to 88 per cent in the North.

NDP Leader Carole James's popularity and support for the party both dropped marginally from the previous month. Forty seven per cent of those polled would vote NDP if the election were held on the day after the poll, compared with 48 per cent in October. Similarly, her approval rating dropped to 25 per cent, from 28 per cent in the previous month.

The margin of error in the online survey conducted Tuesday and Wednesday of 807 randomly selected B.C. adults was 3.5 percentage points.

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