The New Democrat Party is confronting what looks to be its worst-ever performance in Monday’s federal election, with Jagmeet Singh losing his riding, resigning his leadership and the party losing official status in the House of Commons.
Global News is projecting the Liberals will form government for the fourth time — their third minority in a row — with the Conservatives improving their seat-count from the last three elections, leaving the NDP in a distant fourth place.
“Obviously I’m disappointed that we could not win more seats,” said Singh, who told supporters at campaign headquarters in Burnaby, B.C., that he would resign as leader after an interim leader is appointed.
“But I’m not disappointed in our movement. I’m hopeful for our party … We have built the best of Canada and we are not going anywhere.”
Party insiders said the results were a blow to the left-wing party that had held the balance of power for the previous Liberal government and once held official Opposition status during the 2011 Conservative majority government.
“We were expecting a difficult night,” former NDP MP Nathan Cullen told Global News.
Yet NDP press secretary Melanie Richer said she was “surprised” by both the tighter-than-expected leads held by NDP candidates in some ridings and the losses by large margins elsewhere. She said the party “saw a path” to winning the minimum 12 seats required to hold official status, which allows parties to sit on committees and ask more questions during question period.
Richer agreed that both the spectre of U.S. President Donald Trump and the possibility of a Conservative government under Pierre Poilievre had left many New Democrats more mindful of voting for a party likely to form government, leaving the NDP out of the conversation.
“Folks were saying they wanted to vote NDP and send people to Ottawa who wanted to fight for them, but they were scared,” she said.
The party managed to hang on to ridings in Vancouver, Edmonton, Winnipeg and Montreal, as well as in Nunavut, although their vote shares were smaller than past elections.
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But in many other ridings — particularly in Metro Vancouver, Vancouver Island and Ontario, where the party was shut out entirely — its support utterly collapsed.
Many incumbents lost by double digits, and Singh himself came in third place in his Burnaby Central riding.
The last time the NDP saw so few seats and ballots cast was 1993, when former leader Audrey McLaughlin delivered nine seats and won just under seven per cent of all votes cast in that election.
Yet the NDP are projected to win even fewer seats and votes than that historic low point, leading to the worst result since the party’s formation in 1962.
The party is projected to hold just seven seats, down from 24 when Parliament was dissolved for the election campaign, with 6.3 per cent of the vote share.
That may still be enough to hold the balance of power with the Liberals, which with 169 projected seats just three shy of a majority.
How did the NDP get here?
Under Singh, who became leader in 2017, the New Democrats fell to fourth-party status in the 2019 federal election, gaining just one more seat in 2021 — a far cry from the days of serving as the official Opposition under former leader Jack Layton.
The NDP effectively tied itself to Trudeau when it signed a supply-and-confidence agreement with the Liberal government in 2022. The pact assured the NDP would get its priority legislation passed in exchange for keeping the minority Liberals in power until 2025.
While the NDP gained some policy wins through the deal — including “anti-scab” legislation and the beginnings of national pharmacare and dental care programs —` the Conservatives frequently linked Singh and his party with Trudeau and the Liberals in attacks, and the NDP’s approval ratings have eroded ever since the COVID-19 pandemic.
“When you look at what was accomplished in terms of pharmacare, dental care, child care in this last government, none of that would have happened without the New Democrats, but they’ve been unable to make that case to voters,” Alberta NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi told Global News.
Poilievre and his caucus took to referring to the government as the “NDP-Liberal coalition,” although a coalition is different than a supply-and-confidence agreement. Poilievre also argued Singh was declining to topple the Liberals because he wanted his federal government pension which kicked in earlier this year, an allegation Singh has denied.
On the campaign trail, Singh defended his decision to not trigger an election sooner by voting non-confidence in the Liberals. Despite vowing he would bring such a motion at the earliest opportunity, he also said he would help the Liberals pass legislation to support Canadians impacted by Trump’s tariffs.
Trump’s inauguration as U.S. president in January, and his escalating attacks on Canada’s economy and sovereignty, helped turn the Canadian election into a question of leadership, and who could best push back on Trump in a future negotiation on trade, security and other issues.
That question left Singh out in the cold, analysts say.
“Unfortunately, folks are really looking for somebody who could beat Donald Trump, and we may not have been the answer this time,” Richer said, insisting that if this were any other election, the party, the campaign and the leader “didn’t do anything wrong.”
“If you remove the geopolitical situation that we’re in, which was an important thing in this election, I think you would look at Singh and you would look at the party and you would think they’d be running a perfect, beautiful campaign.”
The NDP focused its platform on its traditional key issues: expanding public health care and affordable housing, higher taxes on wealthy Canadians and corporations, and fighting climate change.
As far as its proposals to combat Trump and the U.S., the party did not echo the Liberals and Conservatives in expanding energy projects, and its promises to protect tariff-hit sectors like the auto industry were light on details.
While it made pre-election promises to boost Arctic security investments and raise defence spending to hit NATO’s two per cent of GDP target by 2032 — the latest deadline among all parties — there was no mention of military spending in the NDP’s costed platform.
Cullen said he’s hopeful the NDP can bounce back in the next election, when Trump won’t be a factor.
“Hopefully we’re not dealing with a president trying to take over the country and destroy our economy,” he said.
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