Weekly Writ 7/17: How the length of the NDP's leadership race stacks up
Parties in the NDP's position tend to take their time. Plus, how the Conservatives spent their money in 2024.
Welcome to the Weekly Writ, a round-up of the latest federal and provincial polls, election news and political history that lands in your inbox every Thursday morning.
After some internal (and external) debates over how long the next NDP leadership race should be, the New Democrats have set a date. The successor to Jagmeet Singh will be named no later than March 29, 2026.
Last week, the NDP put out a news release about the 2026 leadership contest. It will begin in September and end at the party’s national convention in Winnipeg in March. Contestants will need to raise the $100,000 entry fee to participate, a fee that has been increased from the $30,000 that was required to run in 2017.
The party says the entry fee was set at this level in order to test “candidates’ organizational and fundraising capacity” and, considering the financial woes the New Democrats find themselves in, that’s a reasonable prerequisite for participation.
The rest of the details will be settled upon and published before September, but those are the broad outlines of the contest. Already, two potential contenders have bowed out: Matthew Green, who went down to defeat in his Hamilton Centre riding in April, and former MP Guy Caron, who ran in the 2017 leadership contest. Caron was defeated in 2019 but has since become the mayor of Rimouski, a (lovely) city in eastern Quebec.
From the date of the election, when Singh announced he was done, to March 29, the party will have gone 335 days without a permanent leader. That’s about typical for the New Democrats and for parties in their position in the House of Commons, but it does make the race a little longer than the average for leadership contests over the last 75 years.
In the chart below, I’ve ranked the party leadership races of the Liberals, Conservatives (and their predecessor parties), New Democrats, Bloc Québécois and Greens since 1950 by how long those races lasted. It took a bit of research to pinpoint the exact day that some past leaders announced their intentions to resign and I could be off by a few days in some cases. But, with that caveat out of the way, here’s the list, with the one at the very top standing out.
Yes, the leadership race won by Mark Carney is the shortest in modern Canadian history at just 62 days. It’s one of only three races to be resolved within three months.
But for the New Democrats, the 2026 leadership contest will rank as the 27th longest out of this list of 38. It ranks fourth-longest out of the eight races the New Democrats have held in the past. It makes it a rather typical race for the NDP, if on the long side when looking at all parties as a whole.
There’s a clear preference for shorter races the more important is the role held by leaderless parties. Governing parties have selected their new leaders an average of 169 days after the announced departure of the old leader. Parties forming the official opposition have held contests lasting an average of 229 days, while parties in the third, fourth or fifth slots in the House of Commons have taken their time. Their contests have lasted an average of 392 days. By that measure, this 335-day contest is somewhat shorter than the average for a party that does not hold one of the top two jobs in the House.
Accordingly, since the Conservatives and Liberals have swapped the governing and opposition roles throughout their history, their average leadership contest length is about the same: 237 days for the Conservatives and their predecessor parties vs. 278 days for the Liberals. The NDP, before settling on this contest, averaged leadership races lasting 412 days.
Of course, there is a difference between the official start of a race and the unofficial start of a race, which is what this measures. But, we know that leadership contests begin as soon as an incumbent leader says he or she will step aside — and sometimes they start even before that.
Does a short or long race make a difference? That’s hard to say. Some success stories are at both the top and bottom of the list. Mark Carney and John Diefenbaker were quickly selected and won their next elections, while Justin Trudeau and Joe Clark won drawn-out leadership contests before their first electoral victories. John Turner and Kim Campbell had short races before their crushing defeats, while the long exposure of the 2017 Conservative leadership race didn’t do much for Andrew Scheer.
What matters most is who prevails, whether the race is short or long. The NDP has another eight months to go before settling on their next leader — and you can expect full coverage of the contest here at The Writ once it gets officially kicked off in September.
Programming note: Everyone needs a vacation sometimes! I’ll be taking a few weeks off this summer, so there will be no Weekly Writ on July 24 or on August 7.
Now, to what is in this week’s instalment of the Weekly Writ:
News on how the Conservatives spent their oodles of cash in 2024, as well as on the oodles of candidates lining up for the Battle River–Crowfoot byelection. Plus, two byelections are called in Prince Edward Island.
Polls show Mark Carney and the Liberals are maintaining their lead, and that Canadians are willing to give Carney a bit of slack when it comes to Donald Trump. Plus, Canadian views on climate change and defense spending.
#EveryElectionProject: The Conservatives prevail (for the last time) in the 1928 B.C. election.
Upcoming milestone for Mark Carney (already!).
NEWS AND ANALYSIS
Conservatives were big spenders in 2024
You’ve got to spend money to make money, they say. You’ve also got to spend money to win elections. The Conservatives tried to do that in 2024. It didn’t quite work out in 2025.
The annual filings for 2024 are starting to trickle in on the Elections Canada website. The Conservatives are the only major party to have their filings already posted, so let’s delve in. They show that the Conservatives weren’t afraid to open the wallet last year.