If Greens Did Not Split the NDP Vote, Canada’s 2019 Federal Election Would Have Had A Different Outcome

The Green Party of Canada was on the fringe until the last two elections.  Previously they had a logical platform that was very similar to the Conservatives but with a focus on clean energy and illogical rejection of Nuclear energy.  However, Green positions have recently moved the far left, by Canadian standards.

This repositioning of the party has put them in direct competition with the New Democratic Party for votes, as the Conservatives and Liberals attract nearly all of the center.

After the October 21st 2019 Canadian Federal Election, we thought it would be interesting to analyze the data and see what would have happened if the Green Party had not split the traditional left vote.

Adding the seats won by the Greens and NDP only totals to 27 which tells us almost nothing we did not already know.  Instead we invested a few hours to combined the NDP and Green votes in each riding and tallied it up the winnings.

Putting NDP and Greens voters back together would have propelled them from being Canada’s forth and fifth place parties into Canada’s third place finisher with an historically significant 37 seats:

Party	Seats
Liberal	157
Conservative	121
Combined NDP & Green	37
Block Quebecois	32
Independent	1

 

 

Below are the results of every NDP election since inception in 1962.  You can see in the last row that if Green and NDP supporters voted as one, they would have achieved a highly respectable 22.4%.  Their historical average is just 16.6%.

In fact if the two parties had combined, the NDP/Greens would have had their second greatest finish ever:

 

Election	Leader	Seats	+/–	Votes	%	Status/Gov.
1962	Tommy Douglas	19 / 265	Increase 11	1,044,754	13.57	Fourth party
1963		17 / 265	Decrease 2	1,044,701	13.22	Fourth party
1965		21 / 265	Increase 4	1,381,658	17.91	Third party
1968		22 / 264	Increase 1	1,378,263	16.96	Third party
1972	David Lewis	31 / 264	Increase 9	1,725,719	17.83	Third party
1974		16 / 264	Decrease 15	1,467,748	15.44	Third party
1979	Ed Broadbent	26 / 282	Increase 10	2,048,988	17.88	Third party
1980		32 / 282	Increase 6	2,165,087	19.77	Third party
1984		30 / 282	Decrease 2	2,359,915	18.81	Third party
1988		43 / 295	Increase 13	2,685,263	20.38	Third party
1993	Audrey McLaughlin	9 / 295	Decrease 34	939,575	6.88	No status
1997	Alexa McDonough	21 / 301	Increase 12	1,434,509	11.05	Fourth party
2000		13 / 301	Decrease 8	1,093,748	8.51	Fourth party
2004	Jack Layton	19 / 308	Increase 6	2,127,403	15.68	Fourth party
2006		29 / 308	Increase 10	2,589,597	17.48	Fourth party
2008		37 / 308	Increase 8	2,515,288	18.18	Fourth party
2011		103 / 308	Increase 66	4,508,474	30.63	Official Opposition
2015	Tom Mulcair	44 / 338	Decrease 59	3,441,409	19.71	Third party
2019	Jagmeet Singh	24 / 338	Decrease 20	2,849,214	15.9	Fourth party
2019	If NDP & Green Combined	37 / 338	Decrease 7	4,011,575	22.4%	Third party

 

If you are interested in Canadian elections, you might find our article A View From The Inside Of The 2019 Canadian Federal Election: Everyone Can Vote to be worth three minutes of your time.

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