The NDP’s complicated leadership election system, and how it works for them

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This article was published 31/01/2015 (4199 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Manitoba NDP uses a complicated delegate system to elect its leader, a process that will be under scrutiny at its leadership convention in March. Here’s a look at how it works, and two alternative systems used by Canadian political parties.

Manitoba NDP delegates

At the NDP leadership convention, each electoral constituency, and the Manitoba Young New Democrats, get one delegate for every 10 party members they have. There are another nearly 220 automatic delegates, who are the party’s provincial council and current Manitoba NDP MLAs and MPs.

Finally, the unions get a fixed 20 per cent of the total number of delegates, which means the more delegates from the other groups, the more delegates the unions get.

Here’s a map of where the NDP’s delegates for the March convention are coming from. Zoom out for the rest of the province. Darker constituencies are sending more delegates. If you can’t see the map, click here.

 

Royce Koop, a Canadian politics professor at the University of Manitoba, says the system “produces certain outcomes. It’s going to privilege certain areas where the NDP is stronger, because they’re going to be able to send more delegates because they’re going to be able to recruit more members.”

The delegate system works well in drawing attention to the party, with a livelier leadership convention, he said.

“When there’s a convention like this, when there are delegates, people don’t exactly know what’s going to happen,” Koop said. “There’s actually drama at these conventions. Delegates don’t have to vote the way they said they would, and then it goes to second and third ballot.”

The drama, however, comes at a price that takes away some power from grassroots members.

“An all-member vote is more democratic, it removes that intermediary delegate system, but there’s some real advantages to the way the NDP is doing this,” Koop said.

A one-member, one-vote system

Giving every member a vote may be the most direct way to elect the leader — and closest to an actual provincial or federal election — but inside a party, it poses some challenges.

Nelson Wiseman, a political science professor at the University of Toronto, is critical of the way party workers try to sell memberships right before a leadership race to get more delegates — a practice that may increase in a one-member, one-vote system. He says there should be a minimum amount of time someone is a member before participating in the leadership process.

“I say, make it a year. Are they really members? What does it mean that they’re members of the party?” Wiseman said. The cut-off date for signing up members who could vote in the Manitoba leadership race was Jan. 6, three months before the convention on March 8.

The federal NDP used a form of one-member, one-vote, with 75 per cent of the votes going to members and 25 per cent going to unions at their convention in 2003 that saw Jack Layton elected as leader. In the 2012 leadership race that saw Thomas Mulcair elected, the NDP did away with the labour carve-out completely.

Koop says the frenzied membership drives might have benefits for the NDP.

“The NDP is actually better at holding on to members,” Koop said. He says this is partly because “the NDP actually gives its members rewards in terms of policy.”

An equal vote for every constituency

The federal Conservatives use a points system while electing their leader. Every constituency is given 100 points, regardless of the number of members in the constituency. If a candidate gets 70 per cent of the votes in that constituency, they get 70 points, and the candidate with the most points across the country wins.

“That represents geographic equality, whereas the NDP is based on… member equality with some geographic consideration,” Wiseman said.

“It doesn’t matter if you have one member in the constituency or 10,000 members in the constituency. What happens is that the 10,000 members vote and their votes only count for up to 100 points… and that one member’s vote in the other constituency also counts for 100 points,” he said.

The points system, though, forces candidates to campaign more widely.

“If you want party leadership contestants to pay attention to all the different parts of the province, that’s the way to do it, give them all an equal share of delegates, and the NDP has chosen not to do this,” Koop said. “You can see how there’s a focus on really strong NDP ridings, to get as many members out in those ridings as they possibly can.”