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Avi Lewis Wins Leadership of the Federal NDP on First Ballot

The longtime activist now faces the hard task of rebuilding the party and re-engaging disaffected voters

Leadership conventions sometimes generate unexpected results. For the New Democratic Party in 2026, there was very little to be surprised about: Avi Lewis, widely considered the frontrunner since the beginning of the race, clinched the NDP leadership on the first ballot with 56 percent of the vote.

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The day before, a Lewis-aligned “change, together” slate of candidates had swept the executive of the NDP, foreshadowing what was to come at the top of the ticket. Today, they and their new leader are newly responsible for moving the party forward from a very challenging decade.

Since its founding, The New Democratic Party has been labelled the conscience of Canada, providing a progressive option for people who feel both Conservatives and Liberals fall short. That identity still carries weight: many Canadians agree with NDP positions on affordability, industrial strategy, and social policy. In a Parliament where Mark Carney’s Liberals appear to have ideologically crossed to the Conservative bench—adopting legislation limiting democratic checks and balances, threatening certain Charter rights, and doing away with hard-won environmental protections—there is room for a confident counterweight.

But there is a wide chasm between voters agreeing with your ideas and believing those ideas have a path forward under a party with a federal caucus small enough, in the words of journalist Nick Taylor-Vaisey, to carpool to Parliament in “an old-school station wagon.”

Can Lewis grow the party from group chat to government-in-waiting?

Canada Is Edging Toward a Two-Party System. That Would Be a Mistake

Can the NDP Rebuild—or Is It Time to Start Something New?

The NDP Can’t Call Itself a National Party If Its Leaders Can’t Speak French

Things weren’t always this gloomy for the NDP. In 2011, they represented a credible, if untested, alternative to then prime minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives. Despite some of the NDP candidates barely speaking French, Quebec voters flocked to them, hoping to keep Harper out of power. A few years later, with Thomas Mulcair as leader, they began an exhaustingly long campaign in a good position but were quickly outflanked to their left by Team Trudeau. While Mulcair spluttered, Justin Trudeau said the Liberals would accept a bigger deficit in exchange........

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