Not Dead Yet… Again

Don't ever count the NDP out.

Don’t believe everything you read. With the election officially underway, the same old stories are back again. Even though the NDP has repeatedly proved them wrong, critics are dusting off the same tired tales again. Their favorite? The claim that the NDP is doomed – squeezed out in the simplistic, American-style “red versus blue” narrative.

For decades, this story has resurfaced every election cycle. (2015 may have been the only exception, but frankly, the pundits and “experts” got that one wrong too – just in the opposite direction.)

2011 was my first experience at the center of this fiction. Even before the election started, with Michael Ignatieff (remember him?) leading the Liberals, the consensus among talking heads was that he was building momentum, Jack Layton was tired and spent, and NDP was getting squeezed out.

So, when journalists gathered around Jack to hear his assessment of Stephen Harper’s final budget, they were shocked when he announced the NDP would not support it. With the other opposition parties saying the same, his announcement meant the minority Conservative government wouldn’t survive another confidence vote. “You’re going to lose seats,” many told my colleagues and me. “Is Jack crazy?” they asked. Others were more blunt: “You guys are fucked.”

I remember a specific conversation later that night. While a journalist physically looked down on me – and on our party in just about every other way – I explained that Jack was running to be Prime Minister. To show the beginnings of a path, I laid out 44 seats we could win. He laughed, shook his head, and said I was clearly on something stronger than beer.

Our early campaign events added to the negativity. They were marked by what I’m going to generously call “modest-sized” crowds and a less-than-fully-energized leader. One columnist wrote, “Layton’s charm, while undeniable, can’t hide the fact that the party struggles to fill its rally halls.” CBC and CTV reporters spun their cameras around at announcements (even when audiences weren’t planned or invited) to show empty rooms and included those shots in their nightly news hits. Our poll numbers, which started in the low to mid-teens, were dropping. The only real debate in the media about the NDP was, “How many seats will they lose?”

On the day the Liberals launched their platform, I swung by to share some facts about their record and then found myself taking a short walk with a journalist who pushed back on my positivity out our own chances with her take. “It’s not good out there with your team. Events are flat, Jack is flat, and Ignatieff is on fire.”

If you’re reading this, you probably follow politics closely enough to know how this story ends – with Jack Layton as the Leader of the Official Opposition and a caucus of 103 NDP MPs. But that wasn’t considered as even a remote possibility until the final week or so of the campaign.

In 2019, the most optimistic column about our party’s chances carried the backhanded compliment that we were “not dead yet.” It was the same story in 2021. No one at the time would have guessed that Jagmeet Singh and his team would use their power to ensure the largest expansion of Medicare in Canada since its inception – delivering dental care and pharmacare.

The point? The NDP has been counted out before – every time, in fact. As you read and watch reports of the NDP’s demise, know that those rumours are greatly exaggerated. Sure, some stories will scream defeat, and Liberals will shout from the rooftops that they are the only choice to defeat the Conservatives. But as the Ontario NDP reminded us just a few weeks ago, NDP election campaigns are a testament to the power of choice and the strength of local campaigns. Despite a drop in raw vote totals, they held nearly all their seats – proof that strong ground games and local organizing matter.

Voters make their own choices, and our movement is built on more than polls and press narratives. So, if you hear the same old talk of “strategic voting” or see the usual obituaries for our campaign, don’t be so quick to buy in. The campaign has just begun.