I'm glad to see Harper go but the NDP has been absolutely crushed in the election, and frankly I can't believe Dan Harris lost to Bill Blair of all people. Not a single seat from Toronto.
With Harper gone and a large increase in both youth and strategic voters, how do we prepare a recovery for 2019?
Posted Oct 20, 2015, 7:57 AM UTC
Get rid of Tom. I can't believe he didn't resign.
If losing 60% of the seats isn't reason enough to resign then I don't know what is.
Do we want a revolving door? This was still the second best showing ever historically for the NDP
There are two questions here - what does the party have to do, and what do individual members have to do.
For the party, I think that the first thing is to not panic. The Liberals ran a fantastic campaign, and we ran a fairly dismal one and still came out with our second-best all time result in terms of seats. This is pretty much our floor now, I think. Mulcair will probably have to go - he has discredited himself as an eventual candidate for Prime Minister, and Canadians don't trust him. I don't think that we need a huge, radical rethink (but then, I'm not really a radical leftist), but we do need to run to the left of the Liberals. We had a decent, if slightly unambitious, plan that was sold ineptly and attacked successfully by a Liberal campaign team at the top of its game.
We'll need to note the shortcomings of the Liberal government over the next four years, and remind progressive/leftish voters that we share their values. We need to be the party of urban issues: transit infrastructure, sustainable growth, decentralized governance. Canada's cities are growing quickly (and will grow even more quickly once the unsustainable nature of our sprawled-out suburbs becomes clear), and we need to be the party that speaks to their concerns and values.
As for members, we need to hang in there. Keep going to riding association meetings. Keep attending conventions, keep being principled, keep holding our own leaders to account, keep demanding the best policies possible. Let your assumptions be questioned, don't be dogmatic in defeat. Shop at the co-op and write angry letters to the editor. In short, keep being New Democrats, and dream no little dreams.
We can have an NDP government in this country some day, but it's going to take hard work, determination and a forward-thinking platform to get us there.
When's the next NDP convention?
The Liberals came up with some really good ideas last time, especially legalization of marijuana. We really missed an opportunity there.
Edit:
I just looked it up. Article V Part 1 (a) Biennial Conventions shall take place at least once every other calendar year at a time and place determined by the Council.
The last one was in April 2013. So a new one has to be some time before January, right?
we posted a strong fundraising campaign leading into the election and the second highest seat total in our history. Things are just beginning for the NDP.
Things are just beginning for the NDP.
Please tell me it's true; I feel devastated. :(
Here's some food for thought. This was a wave election. Not every election is like that. The wave will recede (as ours did), and our fundamentals are not so bleak.
The seats we lost in the Maritimes were sad to lose because of the quality of the incumbents. But those were not safe NDP seats. They were seats we held because of the quality of the incumbents. For us to lose Leslie, Stoffer et al. is sad. For the Tories to lose Southwestern New Brunswick and rural Nova Scotia is a disaster. (edit: Fundy Royal, for example, went Liberal for the second time in 100 years)
We are still extremely competitive in Quebec. We came in second in total votes and in seats despite an immense Liberal wave.
Toronto was an unmitigated disaster, but we can likely win some of it back next time. We failed to win Toronto progressives, and that's a failure that Mulcair and his team need to own.
Manitoba was bad, in large part because of the Liberal wave and because of the unpopularity of the provincial government.
Saskatchewan went not so bad. We won the seat we needed to win, Saskatoon-West, and eked out a win in Regina-Lewvan, as well as in the north. The Liberal wave cost us Sask-Uni and Sask-Grasswood, but we can pull those in next time once the Liberal wave recedes. The Liberals don't have a lot of organization here, and we had 150 people out in Grasswood alone yesterday pulling the vote.
Absent a Liberal wave, we are still competitive in Edmonton. Alberta is still pretty dire, but then, that's not news.
B.C. absent Vancouver went about as well as could be expected. We swept the Island except for Elizabeth May's riding, and were competitive in inland BC. As for Vancouver, once again, the Liberals won't win forever.
There's a clear appetite for progressive policies (and policies perceived as progressive) among Canadian urbanites, and we failed to win them by pitching to suburbanites in the 905 and elsewhere. The NDP can win big in Canada's cities if we capture their imaginations the way the Liberals did, and our success/competitiveness in many parts of rural Canada demonstrate that we're far from out of the game.
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I don't disagree. I think that we got our clock pretty thoroughly cleaned last night, but we're not done. We have pretty solid fundamentals in large parts of the country. I'd be interested to see a comparison of second-place finishes by New Democrats in the Broadbent years versus last night. I would bet a hefty sum you'd see a lot more this time around.
We did not run a good campaign, the Liberals ran an excellent one, including their skill in controlling the narrative of who was the 'real progressive option'. Some shine will come off of the golden boy in the next four years. We can present progressive Canadians with a credible plan (and not repeat the silly costing fiasco of this election), and win with a good leader.
The one thing that we don't have is the strength of the Liberal brand. Realistically, we can only hope to win a minority government at first. We won't be able to break through in the Maritimes and in Ontario to the degree that got the Liberals into government last night. But a strong coalition forged in BC, Quebec, the urban Prairies, northern Ontario, healthy chunks of Toronto and a scattering of seats elsewhere in the country put us in minority territory. From there, we prove ourselves.
We could have the NDP that doesn't throw its progressive principles to the wind the second they have a chance of winning? This mistake was repeated by Horwath in Ontario and we all saw the end results.
What was there in the NDP platform that appealed to Quebec? Tax cuts, balanced budgets, increased military/police spending, and a worse version of the Quebec child-care plan does not look very palatable to the Quebecois. It's no wonder that the NDP lost the province.
Personally, the NDP leadership needs the boot. Why would I want to support a party that is incompetent and willing to betray its socialist roots for victory?
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It'd be nice to see a focus shift from Quebec to the West. But I just say that as a hopeful Sask NDPer.
Quebec can win an election, but it doesn't make for a strong party.
Without the support of Québec the NDP will probably never win an election. It's just the reality.
Absolutely. There is no path to an NDP government that doesn't go through Quebec. We are too structurally weak in Ontario, Alberta and the Maritimes to be able to forego it.
| Result | West | Ontario | Quebec | Atlantic | Terr. | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2008 | 14 | 17 | 1 | 4 | 1 | 37/308 |
| 2011 | 15 | 22 | 59 | 12 | 1 | 103/308 |
| 2015 | 20 | 8 | 16 | 0 | 0 | 44/338 |
Nearly half of the party's seats are now in the West. I think the focus shift will be natural.
Get on your protesting pants and advocate your hardest for the liberals to actually implement some of that electoral reform they talked about
If they don't, my respect and trust for them will drop to 0.
re: that