The NDP is expected to come fifth place in terms of seats in the next federal election, and the party has been stuck between 17 and 21 percent in national polls over the last two years. The NDP’s best showing in terms of national vote share and seat total was in the 2011 election under the leadership of Jack Layton. The NDP has never recovered since Layton’s unfortunate passing shortly after the 2011 federal election. Currently, there are barriers that prevent the NDP from winning federal elections. These barriers include the first-past-the-post electoral system, the absence of a strong leader, and a lack of class consciousness amongst the Canadian public.
First-Past-the-Post (FPTP)
First-past-the-post (FPTP) electoral systems require a candidate to win a plurality of the vote in order to win and defeat other candidates. This means that a candidate contesting a riding only needs to achieve more votes than what all other candidates achieved individually to be elected as a Member of Parliament. The consequence of FPTP electoral systems is that they disadvantage smaller parties and favour the two largest parties. In Canada, the two largest parties are the Liberals and the Conservatives. The problem for the NDP is that to win elections and form government, they must replace the Liberal Party as the dominant center-left party in Canada. The NDP and the Liberals appeal to progressives, meaning that the NDP and Liberals both compete for the progressive vote in Canada. Therefore, the NDP are competing for the same base as the Liberals. The issue with the NDP competing for the same base as the Liberals is that even if the NDP can attract more support, the chances of vote-splitting increase due to the FPTP electoral system. Vote-splitting occurs when two candidates contest the same constituency and are close in the ideological spectrum. The NDP and Liberals are center-left parties, although the NDP is further left in the political spectrum. Vote-splitting between the Progressive Conservatives and Reform led to poor showings for both parties and helped Jean Chretien win his second majority government in 1997, demonstrating that vote-splitting helps the major party on the other end of the political spectrum win elections and leads to terrible defeats to parties that have a competitor on the same end of the ideological spectrum. In the 1997 Canadian federal election, 27 ridings in Ontario were won by the Liberals due to vote-splitting on the right between the Progressive Conservatives and Reform. Without those 27 ridings, the Liberals would have won a minority government in 1997 instead of the majority they achieved due to vote-splitting. Vote-splitting on the left did happen on one occasion in Canadian politics, namely the 2011 federal election. In 2011, the NDP ran a strong campaign under Jack Layton, but what this ultimately resulted in was a Conservative majority government due to vote-splitting with the Liberals. The NDP in order to have any chance of forming government must gain an exceptional amount of support from Liberal voters in order to avoid vote-splitting. Under the leadership of Jagmeet Singh, the NDP has not seen any significant gains in the polls and has performed worse in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections than in 2015 or 2011. Therefore, the NDP under Jagmeet Singh is not in a position to win a federal election.
The NDP Has a Weak Leader
Jack Layton was charismatic, intelligent, and likable, resulting in a subsequent increase in popularity, vote share, and seat total for the NDP in the 2006, 2008, and 2011 federal elections. Under Layton’s leadership, the NDP increased its seat total in the House of Commons in three consecutive federal elections, an achievement no NDP leader before Layton was able to accomplish. Layton successfully appealed to the working class, something Singh has failed to do as Poilievre had made the cost of living his ballot issue in the next election. Singh has made his ballot question about stricter regulations on industry, taxing the rich, and making the rich pay what Singh calls “their fair share”, all very divisive approaches to politics and governance. The NDP under Singh is more ideologically attached to socialism and antagonizing the rich, while the NDP under Layton and Mulclair were much more focused on policy and addressing the needs of the middle class. Singh has proven to be a weak leader because he continuously attacked Trudeau, but at the same time kept him in power for over five years, making his actions contradict his words. Furthermore, Singh keeping the Liberals in power makes the NDP look indistinguishable from the Liberals, and Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has capitalized on this by consistently stating that the current government is a Liberal-NDP coalition. Although the current government is not a Liberal-NDP coalition, Poilievre’s branding of the current government as a Liberal-NDP coalition has cemented a view in the heads of the voters that the NDP and the Liberals are similar. Only recently Singh announced that the NDP will vote to bring down the government, which could be exploited by the Conservatives by framing Singh as someone who is selfish and makes political calculations in pursuit of his pension. Singh's pension kicks in this February, something the Conservatives have incessantly reminded Canadians about.
Lack of Class Consciousness Amongst the Canadian Public
Another significant barrier to the NDP’s success in federal elections is the lack of class consciousness among Canadians. The NDP has historically positioned itself as the party of the working class, advocating for stronger labor rights, higher taxes on the wealthy, and robust social programs. In Canada, class-based voting patterns are weak compared to other Western liberal democracies, with many working-class voters aligning themselves with either the Liberals or the Conservatives, the two mainstream federal political parties in Canada. This makes it difficult for the NDP to consolidate a base of working-class voters.
In recent years, Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives have effectively courted working-class voters by focusing on the rising cost of living, inflation, and housing affordability, issues that resonate deeply with this demographic. Poilievre’s messaging has eclipsed Singh’s focus on wealth redistribution, which, while ideologically aligned with the NDP’s roots, lacks the broad appeal necessary to shift voter allegiances. The NDP’s inability to successfully excite class solidarity among voters is compounded by the Liberal Party’s dominance over progressive messaging. By positioning themselves as champions of middle-class Canadians through programs like the Canada Child Benefit and pandemic-related economic support, the Liberals have successfully captured the attention of progressive voters. Without a strong sense of economic identity among voters, the NDP’s calls for higher taxes on the rich or more robust social programs are often perceived as radical rather than essential, further alienating potential supporters. Poilievre's success in the polls further demonstrates this point as Canadians would rather prefer the center-right economic vision espoused by Poilievre and the Conservatives rather than the socialist economic vision of Jagmeet Singh and the NDP.
The Way Forward for the NDP : An Ideological Shift to the Center
If the NDP wants to win elections, it must come to the center of the political spectrum. Usually, when parties move to the center of the political spectrum especially on economic issues, this helps them win elections and end losing streaks. For example, Bill Clinton rebranded the Democratic Party as a centrist party in the 1992 election campaign and Tony Blair rebranded the Labour Party as a centrist party during the 1997 campaign, which ended the losing streaks of the Democratic Party and the Labour Party. Clinton’s centrism led to a new influx of supporters for the Democratic Party known as “new Democrats”, while Blair rebranded the Labour Party with “New Labour”, framing Labour as the champion of third-way politics in between socialism and economic liberalism. The significance of Blair and Clinton is that they ended the terrible losing streak of their parties by bringing their parties to the center, which led to landslide victories in 1992 and 1997. The Democrat's last election victory before 1992 was in 1976 and the last election victory before 1997 for Labour was in 1974. Obviously, politics in the UK and the U.S. is different than politics in Canada, but Blair and Clinton's electoral successes demonstrate the immense political power of the center of the political spectrum in Western liberal democracies. Although it is difficult for a socialist party like the NDP to become a centrist party, the NDP did moderate under the leadership of Tom Mulclair. Tom Mulclair made the NDP a centrist party, especially on the economy. Mulclair promised to balance budgets, something that is rare for center-left political parties to promise, as leftists tend to favour deficit spending over austerity. Mulclair’s rebranding of the NDP proved effective, internal polling in the early days of the 2015 campaign suggested that the NDP could win a minority government. For the NDP to attain electoral success, they must moderate like they did under Mulclair and find a leader as charismatic as Layton in order to make the NDP more marketable to voters.
