Ontario ONDP Leadership (March 2023)

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Yeah, the critical thing is to try to appeal to as many ordinary people as possible and to avoid breaking the electorate into defined boxes each held to be somehow mutually incompatible with the others: if you do that you'll never win. You don't have to choose between Windsor and Waterloo or between Toronto and Thunder Bay: in fact the differences between all of these places will be functionally a lot less than they were thirty or even twenty years ago. Similar lifestyles, similar problems, even, these days, quite similar places of work on average, and where there are significant differences they generally aren't the sort that obviously contradict and oppose each other.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

In 1970 Dave Barrett was acclaimed BC NDP leader - he won the 1972 election in a landslide. In 1989 Mike Harcourt was acclaimed BC NDP leader - he went on to win a majority in 1991.

These are not, perhaps, the happiest of examples for other reasons though.