April's election did not go as hoped for New Democrats, with the party dropping from 24 to just seven seats in the House of Commons. The result was the worst showing for the NDP since its inception in 1962 and saw it lose official party status after failing to reach the 12-seat threshold.

Jagmeet Singh, who led the NDP through the 2019, 2021 and 2025 elections, announced his resignation in the aftermath of the election.

As the NDP holds its next leadership contest, party officials released a review of where things went wrong in 2025.

Voters told the party it was “too closely linked to Justin Trudeau,” citing the agreement reached between Singh and Liberals that saw the NDP prop up the deeply disliked Trudeau government.

The supply-and-confidence agreement, signed in 2022, saw the NDP repeatedly support the Liberals throughout its duration, culminating in Singh's dramatic assertion he was 'ripping up' the deal prior to the election.

The NDP's 2025 review said messaging surrounding the agreement with the Liberals was “almost universally seen as weak and confusing.”

Perhaps most troubling for the NDP, the report revealed how “the campaign exposed a growing operational, political and cultural distance between the Party and working people.”

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Despite running a campaign that played on concerns of potential Conservative cuts to public spending, Singh slumped behind Pierre Poilievre as the perceived champion of the working class.

“The Party is not seen as leading with work, wages, jobs, industry and economic security, the issues workers vote on,” wrote the report's author, Emilie Taman, an Ottawa lawyer and two-time former NDP candidate.

Taman's review asserted that current and former NDP MPs took issue with that assessment; however, “the perception is there and cannot be ignored,” she concluded.

The NDP's language used in public messaging “often feels exclusionary, academic or moralizing,” the report continued.

Interim Leader Don Davies grappled with this idea during an August interview, as reported by Blacklock's Reporter.

“What is it about us where we were unable to resonate, unable to connect, with working people?” Davies wondered aloud. “One of the questions is, have we veered too much from our class-based analysis to identity politics?”

Answering his own question, the Vancouver Kingsway MP said the party's focus on drag queen story time events for children or fighting for trans-identifying males to compete in women or girls' sports aren't “the real issues that most working people are struggling with.”

Instead, Davies highlighted how working-class Canadians are focused on questions like: “Can they pay their rent? Can they buy a house? Can they buy groceries?”

In contrast, the Poilievre Conservatives heavily pushed messaging about affordability and Canada's cost of living crisis.

“At a time when the rent is devouring paycheques, wealth is pooling at the top, and economic nationalism is resurgent, right wingers are beginning to sound like Canada’s leading social democratic party,” read another assessment of the NDP's struggles published by left-wing outlet The Walrus, which warned Poilievre was “stealing the working class from the NDP.” 

New Democrats are set to elect a new leader on March 29 at the party's convention in Winnipeg.