On Saturday, Canadians said goodbye to their Leader of the Official Opposition and one of the most popular political figures in the country. New Democrats laid to rest the most successful party leader in their history, and a man whose name will likely be repeated in future with the same reverence as that reserved for Tommy Douglas, first head and spiritual heart of the NDP.
The 2011 election was, by far, the NDP’s best result in its 50 year history. Even against the standards of the Liberals and the Conservatives, Jack Layton’s achievement on May 2 was remarkable. At 103 seats, Mr. Layton tied for the fifth largest opposition ever sent to Ottawa in the 41 elections that have taken place since 1867. But even before 2011’s historic result, Jack Layton stacked up well against the party’s two other great leaders.
Though he took 13 per cent of the vote in his first two elections, Tommy Douglas’s last two federal elections in 1965 and 1968 ranked as some of the NDP’s best until the 1980s. In 1965, the NDP won 21 seats and 17.9 per cent of the vote. In 1968, Mr. Douglas increased his party’s seat count to 22 but slipped to 17 per cent support, dropping seats in Ontario but winning 16 seats in the West – a number Jack Layton was unable to surpass.
In 1972, David Lewis won 31 seats (a proportion of seats in the House not bested until 1988) but took less of the vote than Mr. Douglas’s 1965 campaign, and after the 1974 election the NDP caucus shrank to only 16 seats.
Under Ed Broadbent, the party took 26 seats in 1979, 32 seats in 1980, 30 seats in 1984, and 43 seats in 1988, topping out at 20.4 per cent support in that last election – one that would stand as the NDP’s best until this year.
With Audrey McLaughlin and Alexa McDonough at the helm in the 1993, 1997, and 2000 elections, the NDP never won more than 21 seats or 11 per cent of the vote. In 1993, the party was reduced to only nine seats and 6.9 per cent support, the worst result in its history.
When Jack Layton became leader in 2003, the NDP had not been a major factor in Canadian politics for a decade. In his first test as leader in 2004 he increased his party’s seat total to 19 from 13 and its share of the vote to 15.7 per cent from 8.5. Mr. Layton took 4.6 per cent of the vote in Quebec, the best result since 1988, held on to Ms. McDonough’s strong levels of support in Atlantic Canada, pushed his party back up to over 20 per cent in the West, and won seven seats in Ontario with 18.1 per cent support – a dramatic increase over the one seat and 8.3 per cent that the NDP received in the 2000 election.
Jack Layton’s maintenance of good support in Atlantic Canada is one of the more under-appreciated ingredients to his success. Until Ms. McDonough, a former provincial NDP leader from Nova Scotia, New Democrats had never won more than two seats in the region and were shut out in eight of the 11 elections between 1962 and 1993. Mr. Douglas never had more than 9 per cent support in any of the Atlantic provinces, while Mr. Broadbent had success in the region only once, in the 1979 election. Though Mr. Layton never bettered Ms. McDonough’s eight seat wins in Atlantic Canada in 1997, he increased support in the region in every election, reaching 26 per cent in 2008 and 29.5 per cent support (an all-time best) in 2011, winning six seats.
