U of S political expert foresees tough times ahead for NDP

With the federal election more than halfway done, one Saskatchewan-based political expert thinks the New Democratic Party (NDP) could be in trouble.

“They won’t have a seat in the Maritimes, they won’t have a seat in Quebec and I think they’ll be lucky to have three seats in Ontario,” said Greg Poelzer, political scientist at the University of Saskatchewan.

“I fully expect they’ll lose every one of their seats in Saskatchewan this election. They’re going to get wiped out.”

The NDP currently holds three seats in Saskatchewan. Those seats are held by Sheri Benson in the Saskatoon West riding, Georgina Jolibois in the Desnethe – Missinippi – Churchill River riding and Erin Weir – who is no longer with the party – in the Regina Lewvan riding.

Poelzer predicts the party to end this election process with just nine seats nationally – three short of the 12 needed to keep official party status.

“It explains why Jagmeet Singh has spent eight days in British Columbia. That’s the only place where they can realistically hold on to half a dozen seats,” he said.

“And they very well may end up with only four or five seats in British Columbia.”

The NDP fell out of official party status once before. In 1993 it finished with nine seats. However, if it were to happen again this year, Poelzer says it could be a bigger problem than the last time around.

“Here’s the big difference between when they fell to nine seats before — there wasn’t a strong viable alternative in terms of the Green Party,” he said.

“They can’t out green the Greens. And then on the kind of liberal left part of the spectrum, the Liberals have actually been pretty successful squeezing the NDP out there, too.”

Although Poelzer believes part of the NDP’s problems land on their leader Singh, he believes there are bigger, more systemic, problems within the party.

“This is a party that I think is currently searching for identity. It doesn’t know what it should be,” he said. “The Greens have a far more effective message than the NDP. It would not surprise me if they are simply not a viable party at the next federal election.”