NDP Bombed
- Thread starter fuji
- Start date
The NDP tried to displace the Liberals as the center left party, they will now be forced back to the far left where they will never be the choice of Canadians.
Back to their unpopular ideas effing will keep them in perpetual third place.
Depends.
Depends on how Trudeau makes out. If Trudeau flounders, then you may be surprised.
The NDP got 44 seats. If you take the 2011 election out of the equation (as a one time Quebec anomaly), then for the NDP, I think 44 is their best EVER showing in a federal election. I remember at one time, I think under Alexa McDonough, they lost "official party status" when they only had 18 seats or so.
I think Mulcair is "a good guy" and I certainly like him a lot more than Layton. Layton drove me crazy. Mulcair started out at the highest popularity of all 3 leaders, but I think that people just got scared at the thought of an NDP government in Ottawa (too left wing no matter what) and they gravitated towards Trudeau as the party to unseat Harper. A great many people on the left started voting strategically, something which hurt the NDP. In my own riding - Parkdale HIgh Park, Peggy Nash (NDP) went down to the liberal after being our MP for 15 years or so (I'm not sure) and defeating a couple of star liberal candidates (like Gerrard Kennedy for one). I was amazed (and happy) that she lost. (Happy because she'd been in there too long and was too smug frankly.)
Quebec proved to be the big difference. In true Quebec (bombastic) fashion, they have herded to Trudeau, just like last time they herded to Layton, and before that they herded to the BQ, and before that, they herded to Mulroney.
It all comes down to Quebec it seems.
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Dont forget with strategic voting to get harper out supporters of ndp may have gone with liberal. So the popularity of ndp may be higher than the results suggest.
The core vote for the Liberals isn't 30%, its alot lower then that.
Anyways looking at what's left in the NDP alot of the old guard had retired or just lost.
Peter Stouffer, Pat Martin, Megan Leslie, all lost. Yvonne Godin had retired. The Toronto caucus was wiped out. Some of the BC MPs had retired befire the election.
What is left of the old guard are Charlie Angus, David Christopherson, Peter Julian, and Nathan Cullen. Almost everyone else is realitively new, mid 2000's at the oldest, and most elected in 2011 or even 2015.
A good chunk of the BC caucus is new, all three of the NDP Sask MPs are new, 50% of the NDP Manitoba MPs are new (fine okay there are only 2 in the province period), 2 new NDP MPs in Ontario, 1 or 2 of the MPs in Quebec are new, the rest of the Quebec MPs are from 2011, except Tom of course.
They are in a good position to renew itself.
As bad as the NDP bombed, they're still better positioned then at any time before 2011.
Anyways looking at what's left in the NDP alot of the old guard had retired or just lost.
Peter Stouffer, Pat Martin, Megan Leslie, all lost. Yvonne Godin had retired. The Toronto caucus was wiped out. Some of the BC MPs had retired befire the election.
What is left of the old guard are Charlie Angus, David Christopherson, Peter Julian, and Nathan Cullen. Almost everyone else is realitively new, mid 2000's at the oldest, and most elected in 2011 or even 2015.
A good chunk of the BC caucus is new, all three of the NDP Sask MPs are new, 50% of the NDP Manitoba MPs are new (fine okay there are only 2 in the province period), 2 new NDP MPs in Ontario, 1 or 2 of the MPs in Quebec are new, the rest of the Quebec MPs are from 2011, except Tom of course.
They are in a good position to renew itself.
As bad as the NDP bombed, they're still better positioned then at any time before 2011.
That's not saying much. It's shocking how badly they did in this election starting in a leading position.
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Very true. Sensible people have always had their preferences but have never tied themselves to a party, because parties are peculiar specialized institutions whose actions and ideals are part of their own institutional logic. By definition those sensible folk are the centre, and they're only 'swing' voters, if we've been suckered into the partisan labelling that makes cheap journalism and cheap politics a little easier.
Democracy is always about the challenging process of finding where that shifting centre is. If we reduce democracy to parties, then it turns into whatever carny flim-flam and bandwagon parades it takes to swing us away from real thought and involvement.
