A new poll from Angus Reid Public Opinion suggests we're going to see a large NDP majority after the May 14 provincial election.

With a 14 percentage point lead over the B.C. Liberals, the NDP appears poised to capture seats in constituencies that it hasn't won in a generation.

That 14-point edge is true across the province and in the Lower Mainland region.

Meanwhile, NDP Leader Adrian Dix has a 45 pecent approval rating, compared to 32 percent for Green Leader Jane Sterk. The B.C. Liberals' Christy Clark is further back at 30 percent, followed by B.C. Conservative Leader John Cummins at 20 percent.

If this NDP lead holds, veteran North Van city councillor Craig Keating will almost certainly capture North Vancouver–Lonsdale for the New Democrats for the first time since 1991.

Dix will then have to decide if Keating, who has a PhD and teaches history, goes into cabinet to ensure that the North Shore is represented.

Or will Dix reward veteran MLAs who've been stuck in Opposition for eight years, even if they come from cities like Surrey where the party is well-represented in the legislature?

NDP MLAs from Surrey—Jagrup Brar, Sue Hammell, Harry Bains, and Bruce Ralston (likely the finance minister)—have been waiting a long time for a role in the big show.

For now, Christy Clark looks like a goner in Vancouver–Point Grey against lawyer David Eby of the NDP.

Next door in Vancouver-Fairview, Health Minister Margaret MacDiarmid is probably thinking about resuming her medical practice. That's because she's likely to go down to defeat against the NDP's George Heyman.

Eby and Heyman are two of the party's star candidates. But they could easily be shut out of cabinet because so many other Vancouver NDP MLAs—Spencer Chandra Herbert, Mable Elmore, Jenny Kwan, and Shane Simpson—have been patiently waiting their turn.

Vancouver-Langara has traditionally been one of the B.C. Liberals' safest seats. But it could fall to the NDP's George Chow, who served two terms on Vancouver city council, if the governing party doesn't narrow the gap before election day.

Chow is unlikely to make it into cabinet unless Kwan becomes speaker, and Dix wants a minister who can speak Cantonese.

And Vancouver-False Creek—previously a certain B.C. Liberal win—is now far from a sure thing for former mayor Sam Sullivan.

He's facing the NDP's Matt Toner, a digital entrepreneur who teaches at the Centre for Digital Media, and Daniel Tseghey of the Greens. Toner would go straight to the backbenches if he secures an upset victory.

Even traditional B.C. Liberal strongholds like Richmond-Centre are no longer in the bag. Long-time Chinese-language newspaper editor Frank Huang could pull off a surprise for the B.C. NDP. Or if the votes split in a weird way between the NDP, B.C. Liberal, and B.C. Conservative candidates, perhaps the Green standard-bearer, teacher Michael Wolfe, might shock everyone and become an MLA. Stranger things have happened, and Wolfe has a high profile because of his environmental activism.

NDP focuses on first-generation immigrants' votes

The B.C. NDP hasn't traditionally attracted many strong candidates of Chinese descent, which put the Opposition at a disadvantage in previous elections with first-generation Chinese immigrant voters.

With Huang and Chow running—along with Gabriel Yiu in Vancouver-Fraserview and veteran MLA Jenny Kwan in Vancouver–Mount Pleasant—that's no longer the case.

Huang can appeal to the so-called Mainlanders. Yiu, who speaks Cantonese and Mandarin, can talk to almost all of his first-generation constituents of Chinese descent in their first language. And Chow, a political moderate, will calm down some first-generation voters of Chinese descent who worry about the NDP's previous left-wing orientation.

As a result, the NDP will have a higher profile than usual in the Chinese-language media this time around. And that could yield benefits in for the party in races across the region, notably Vancouver-Kensington, Vancouver-Langara, Burnaby North, Burnaby-Willingdon, Burnaby–Deer Lake, and the two Coquitlam constituencies.

The B.C. NDP has always done well with voters of South Asian descent. This election should be no different, particularly with B.C. Liberal MLA Kash Heed consistenty trashing his own party.

And the B.C. NDP has always been the preferred party of the Lower Mainland's large Filipino community. They celebrated the election of the first MLA of Filipino descent, the NDP's Mable Elmore, in 2009.

It may come as a surprise to some that the B.C. NDP has not promised to reinstate the B.C. Human Rights Commission in this year's election platform.

This is at odds with the party's history on this issue.

A veteran NDP MLA of South Asian descent, Raj Chouhan, introduced a private member's bill several years ago to bring back the commission. It played an important educational role and helped people advance human-rights complaints until it was eliminated by former premier Gordon Campbell.

Even though human-rights commissions exist across the country, that no longer appears to fit into the B.C. NDP's mantra of "Change for the Better".

Chouhan, who's seeking reelection in Burnaby-Edmonds, is probably feeling a bit sheepish about that.

Instead, all the NDP platform offers in this area is one sentence: "Strengthen and protect human rights to ensure all citizens are treated with dignity and respect."

What that means in terms of policy is anyone's guess.

In reality, it suggests that the B.C. NDP are feeling pretty comfortable that they have the support of a good percentage of people of colour. Perhaps that's because the B.C. Liberals made a mess of this file with their "quick wins" approach for wooing nonwhite voters.

So there's no longer any political imperative for the B.C. NDP to restore the human rights commission—no matter what Chouhan and other New Democrats might have said in the past.

NDP leader Dix likes to say his party is taking one practical step at a time. But to others, the party platform's silence on the B.C. Human Rights Commission looks a lot more like a case of realpolitik.