During its sixty-three-year history, the New Democratic Party (NDP) achieved its best election result in 2011, winning 103 seats in parliament. Led by the charismatic Jack Layton, the NDP secured the second-highest number of parliamentary seats by implementing their favourite political strategy. This strategy involves the NDP shifting their public rhetoric and governing priorities towards the ideological centre. They believe that since Canadians have only voted for the Conservative and Liberal parties, which have centrist and right-wing agendas, the public must also perceive the NDP as centrist if they ever want to be considered a serious political party capable of governing Canada. While this political strategy was successful in 2011, the NDP’s uncritical adherence to this strategy over the past three years has resulted in an electoral dilemma.
The Liberals won the 2021 election without winning a majority of the 338 parliamentary seats. To become the ruling government in Canada, a political party either needs to win a majority of the parliamentary seats or form a coalition with other parties to collectively hold a majority of the seats in parliament. If a majority coalition cannot be reached, the other parties can join together and call for a new election. By forming a coalition with the Liberals in 2021, the NDP prevented another election from being held, made Justin Trudeau the Prime Minister for another term, and, most importantly, held the balance of power. With the balance of power, the NDP could effectively decide what legislation the Liberals were allowed to pass because, without the NDP, the Liberals did not have the majority of votes needed to progress their legislative priorities. The Liberals could go around the NDP by asking the Conservatives or the Bloc Québécois to vote with them, which does sometimes occur. Still, without the NDP’s support, the Liberals risk triggering a new election, giving the NDP a relatively powerful negotiating position. Even though the NDP had significant negotiating leverage over the last three years, they made limited gains in their left-wing policy priorities and subtly validated the Liberal’s centrist policies and governing practices.
By governing in cooperation with the Liberals, the NDP believed that their political fantasy of being perceived by the public as a serious centrist political party that could win a majority of parliamentary seats would finally come true. This outdated political strategy of moving towards the centre may have increased public support in 2011, but it has not gained any traction in our current political climate. People are frustrated with the inequitable treatment of the average Canadian—when compared with that of the wealthiest Canadians—and generally view centrist policies that the NDP supported as enabling the status quo. The NDP’s failure to increase their public support is reflected in recent public polling data. A marginal change in the next election from the NDP’s current twenty-five parliamentary seats would be wholly insufficient, considering their ceiling was 103 seats in 2011 and 170 seats are required to win a majority.
The NDP’s embrace of the unpopular Liberals and their centrist policies has led them into an electoral dilemma. Regardless of how the NDP portrays their governing record over the last 3 years, they will not be able to win a majority of seats in parliament because the NDP has not provided a good enough reason for uncommitted Canadians to vote for them. For simplicity’s sake, I will categorize uncommitted voters into two categories: voters who want change and voters who do not want change. If the NDP promotes their legislative accomplishments, in coalition with the Liberals, as successful, change voters will reject them as an alternative to the status quo, and anti-change voters will view them as a redundant option. However, if the NDP disavows the Liberal coalition they maintained for 3 years, change voters will view them as hypocrites and anti-change voters will view them as unprincipled. The NDP’s stubborn reliance on their political strategy of embracing centrism has made them irrelevant to uncommitted voters. Assuming most uncommitted voters either want or do not want change, the NDP will be unable to make a forceful case that their party represents either outcome.
While writing this article, we got our answer as to how the NDP plans on navigating this electoral dilemma when they announced on September 4th, 2024, that they are ending their coalition with the Liberals. Immediately, the Conservatives and Liberals put out press releases attacking the NDP’s decision. As I speculated, the Conservatives, wanting to court change voters, pointed out the NDP’s hypocrisy of condemning a government they had supported for three years. Likewise, the Liberals, wanting to court anti-change voters, shamed the NDP for being unprincipled in their implicit rejection of policies they worked together to implement. These two parties understand the societal direction they represent, which allows them to embarrass the NDP for their ideologically inconsistent rhetoric and governing priorities. Optimistically, I want to believe that the NDP made the decision to end their coalition because they understand their current electoral dilemma and want to differentiate themselves using their inherent left-wing identity. However, the last few weeks have demonstrated to me that the NDP is still oblivious of their electoral dilemma.
Instead of committing fully to becoming Canada’s left-wing alternative, they are attempting to split the difference by reframing their left-wing beliefs and centrist governing record as evidence that they should be Canada’s serious governing party. This political strategy is virtually the same as their embrace of centrism with the twist of framing left-wing policies as centrism instead of altering their beliefs to reflect the ideological center. When a political party, whose foundational goal is winning a majority of seats in parliament, continually follows a losing political strategy, I am left with two assumptions. Either the NDP’s leadership irrationally and stubbornly believes that they will eventually win with this political strategy, or there are other rational reasons they continue to embrace centrism to the detriment of their electoral chances. The only rational explanation that I can think of is that the NDP’s embrace of centrism maintains the status quo and also the salaries and societal influence of NDP’s leadership.
Whether the NDP triggers an election now or waits a year for the parliamentary session to naturally conclude, they are not in a position to gain political support because of their self-defeating political strategy built upon embracing centrism whenever they have a legitimate chance of winning an election or holding legislative power. If the NDP was serious about becoming the governing party in Canada, they would recognize the obvious political opportunity and try to be Canada’s left-wing alternative, or better yet, an anti-establishment and working-class alternative that could inspire disaffected partisan voters, non-partisan voters, and Canadians who never vote. The NDP may prove me completely wrong and win plenty of parliament seats through their political strategy of embracing centrism to be taken seriously, with the slight alteration of framing left-wing ideology as ‘centrism’. Still, if I am proven correct, the NDP’s leadership will continue to perpetuate this electoral dilemma until their membership elects leaders who will take the necessary risks to subvert the electoral status quo and, in turn, the governing status quo as Canada’s ruling party.