The New NDP: Moderation, Modernization, and Political Marketing

by David McGrane

The New NDP is the definitive account of the evolution of the New Democratic Party's political marketing strategy in the early twentyfirst century. In 2011, the federal NDP achieved its greatest electoral success – becoming the Official Opposition. The moderation of its ideology and modernization of its campaign structures brought the party closer than ever to governing. But by 2015, it had fallen back to the thirdparty spot. Were moderation and modernization the right choices after all? This incisive book provides lessons for progressive parties on how to win elections in the age of the internet, big data, and social media.

Genres: Politics

534 pages, Hardcover

Published May 17, 2019

Reviews

[Peter Lutz · Rating 3 out of 5]

This should be the definitive account of the rise and fall of the NDP for a while at least, but it suffers from (as past reviewer Eric lamented) being quite dry, even if I enjoyed it.

McGrane argues that the NDP brought itself to the precipice of power thanks to efforts by Jack Layton and his staffers to modernize and moderate the party—modernize by bringing in professional and data-driven staffers to implement sophisticated voter outreach techniques, and moderate by dropping or downplaying the party’s more radical elements and re-focusing on the “middle class” over the working class. It was not just dumb luck, but the NDP also capitalized on the Liberals’ unpopular leaders in Dion and Ignatieff. The party primarily took from the Libs in English Canada and the Bloc + Libs in Quebec, positioning themselves as a/the legitimate governing alternative to the Conservatives.

Although he lays out his case convincingly, McGrane probably showers the average reader too much with all the data he’s collected. (Even for me it’s a touch repetitive.) He also doesn’t suggest much of a course for the NDP in the conclusion: the party saw so much success with a leader laser-focused on issues voters cared about, and a political party’s goal is to win to help their constituents, so why prevaricate when the radical element of the party was marginalized under Layton/Mulcair and is currently leading the party into the ground? That’s up to the reader, but I thought it cowardly. I give the book a 3/5 based on how I think people who read my reviews would enjoy this book, so “good but not great”.

[Eric Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The reason why this book is such a great look of Canadian politics, is that it analyses the NDP and its political marketing techniques used between 2000 and 2015; its refreshing considering all other Canadian political literature focus on the rise of the Conservative Party of Canada in the early 2000s instead. I love the fact that the author keeps a non biased view of the topic, and therefore doesn't pander to the readership of one particular ideology. It is understandable that some readers may be disappointed at the points brought forward by the author, but that would simply be missing the entire point of the text, which is to look at both sides of the issue and to bring forward the reality of the situation.

Nevertheless, this book becomes a total bore during the second half. The author spends hundreds of pages explaining his methodology as well as how he received this information, but seems to write very little on how the gathered information can be used to draw conclusions. A majority of the information can be interpreted easily by the readers who are well read enough on the topic, so it becomes discouraging when it is simpler to just skip a majority of the book in order to read the more important segments.

This book is a fantastic reference to the rise and fall of the NDP, but the academic tone used to write the book makes it an easy pass. Too bad