Christy Clark with Kilo - Canada's first mussel-sniffing dog in this 2017 photo.

(JENNA HICKMAN / iNFOnews.ca)

Not even former BC Liberal leader Christy Clark or one-time Mayor of Surrey and former Federal Conservative MP Dianne Watts would bring the BC United party any closer to winning a provincial election a recent poll has found.

While the Research Co. poll found both Clark or Watts would improve BC United's performance if they led the party, the poll still had BC United coming in third place even with a new leader.

The Research Co. survey asked a representative sample of BC residents how they would vote in an election with 14 different options leading the BC United party.

Clark and Dianne Watts polled the best, attracting 18% of decided voters to BC United.

However, BC United with Clark at the helm would still come in third place behind the BC New Democratic Party at 35% and the Conservative Party of BC at 26%.

With Watts in charge, the numbers were much the same.

"Just under one-in-five British Columbians who are willing to vote for the BC Conservatives (17%) would back BC United with Dianne Watts as leader,” Research Co. president Mario Canseco said in the release.

"Watts would put BC United in second place, behind the BC NDP, among decided voters aged 55 and over (43% to 24%)."

The poll found that current leader Kevin Falcon would come in fifth out of 14 proposed new party leaders, with Vancouver-Langara MLA Michael Lee, who came third in the leadership race in 2022 and Gavin Dew, who came in fifth in the leadership race would garner the party more votes than under Falcon.

Some of the proposed names on the list would be worse for the party than Falcon with the poll finding former BC Liberal leader Andrew Wilkinson and current Mayor of Vancouver Ken Sim would gain less support for BC United if they were in charge.

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