What are the Main Differences Between the New Democrats and Liberals (Canada)?

[Sorenroy]

To be honest I didn't really follow the 2015 or any of the previous elections in Canada. Now that I am more interested, I would like to know what the broad main differences between these two parties are. Looking at the results, it seems like the New Democrats are the rural liberals where the Liberals operate more (do better) in the cities.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Liberals are a catch-all centrist party-of-government with no real ideology other than milquetoast Canadian nationalism (and so Liberal governments have been all over the place policy speaking), NDP are a fairly ordinary socialist party except that they've never formed a government at national level.

[Hatman 🍁]

The NDP does well in the inner cities/ working class cities and rural areas dependent on resource extraction. The Liberals do well in suburbs and wealthy inner city enclaves.

The NDP is a social democratic party and the Liberals are a big tent centrist party, that have rhetorically moved to the left in the last election.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Also the Liberals can do well almost literally anywhere. They have a very high electoral ceiling. And a surprisingly low electoral floor.

[IceAgeComing]

The proof of that is probably just looking at the 2011 and 2015 Election results; the latter was so bad that people had basically said that the Liberals were dead and very unlikely ever to form government again, when four years later they managed to get a comfortable majority government.  Although "low floor, high ceiling" probably describes every Canadian political party, considering how unpredictable Canadian politics has a habit of being...

You also shouldn't confuse the Federal Liberals with some Provincial Liberal parties; they were basically the same for a long time but in recent years some provincial branches of the Liberals de-affiliated from the federal Liberal Party (who still stand for Federal elections in those provinces mind) and stand on very different policies: the BC Liberals are the main centre-right party there now; while the Quebec Liberals are... odd: its a broad-base Federalist party that somehow manages to have a broader base than the Federal Liberals (Tom Mulclair (current NDP leader) and Jean Charest (former Progressive Conservative leader, after he stood down from that he went into provincial politics and served as leader of the PLQ and Premier for a bunch of years) were both in it at the same time, which shows just how broad their base is) and its hard to place on the political spectrum because of that: I'd describe it as vaguely centre-right but I'm probably wrong.  Basically Canadian politics is confusing and unpredictable, which means that its actually pretty interesting to keep an eye on.

[Hatman 🍁]

Also the Liberals can do well almost literally anywhere. They have a very high electoral ceiling. And a surprisingly low electoral floor.

Well, the Liberals can do well in most places, but the rural prairies (especially Saskatchewan and Manitoba) they have been toxic since Mackenize King. And of course the most nationalist parts of Quebec.

[MaxQue]

The proof of that is probably just looking at the 2011 and 2015 Election results; the latter was so bad that people had basically said that the Liberals were dead and very unlikely ever to form government again, when four years later they managed to get a comfortable majority government.  Although "low floor, high ceiling" probably describes every Canadian political party, considering how unpredictable Canadian politics has a habit of being...

You also shouldn't confuse the Federal Liberals with some Provincial Liberal parties; they were basically the same for a long time but in recent years some provincial branches of the Liberals de-affiliated from the federal Liberal Party (who still stand for Federal elections in those provinces mind) and stand on very different policies: the BC Liberals are the main centre-right party there now; while the Quebec Liberals are... odd: its a broad-base Federalist party that somehow manages to have a broader base than the Federal Liberals (Tom Mulclair (current NDP leader) and Jean Charest (former Progressive Conservative leader, after he stood down from that he went into provincial politics and served as leader of the PLQ and Premier for a bunch of years) were both in it at the same time, which shows just how broad their base is) and its hard to place on the political spectrum because of that: I'd describe it as vaguely centre-right but I'm probably wrong.  Basically Canadian politics is confusing and unpredictable, which means that its actually pretty interesting to keep an eye on.

The ideology of the PLQ is "whatever people funding it wants".

[Antonio the Sixth]

Liberals are a catch-all centrist party-of-government with no real ideology other than milquetoast Canadian nationalism (and so Liberal governments have been all over the place policy speaking), NDP are a fairly ordinary socialist party except that they've never formed a government at national level.

I don't really want to open that can of worms but... isn't calling Mulcair's NDP "socialist" a massive stretch?

[Hatman 🍁]

Liberals are a catch-all centrist party-of-government with no real ideology other than milquetoast Canadian nationalism (and so Liberal governments have been all over the place policy speaking), NDP are a fairly ordinary socialist party except that they've never formed a government at national level.

I don't really want to open that can of worms but... isn't calling Mulcair's NDP "socialist" a massive stretch?

Mulcair may not be a socialist (as much as any Western social democratic party leader is these days), but that doesn't mean the NDP isn't. (And by socialist here, I mean social democratic... the NDP's "socialist caucus" is a very noisy but very small sub-group of the party that is actively excluded from power within the party.

[IceAgeComing]

The UK Labour Party was always a "socialist party", even though under Blair it hardly pursued that many socialist policies.  Its a term that helps to basically say the origins of a party more than anything else...

[Antonio the Sixth]

The UK Labour Party was always a "socialist party", even though under Blair it hardly pursued that many socialist policies.  Its a term that helps to basically say the origins of a party more than anything else...

I don't consider the French Socialist Party to have anything "socialist" (or even social democratic, really) under Hollande/Valls either.

[King of Kensington]

NDP will likely move left again after Mulcair.  The most sensible place for them at this point is to be a sort of "Bernie Sanders party" or something like where they were under Ed Broadbent in the 80s.

The NDP did move far enough to the right so tactically the Liberals tried to sound more "progressive" in the 2015 election.  They used a very similar strategy to the Liberals in Ontario - hard to believe the NDP fell for the same trick

I'd say over the last two decades, the Liberals have either stayed more or less the same place or even moved a little left, but the NDP is well to the right of where it was then.  So the difference between the two parties is less.  The Conservatives since the Alliance/PC merger are well to the right of the old PCs as well, so the difference between the Liberals and Conservatives is greater than in the past, more because of the Conservative shift rightward.

[Hatman 🍁]

The Liberals have definitely moved to the left on social issues, which is fueling the promiscuousness of progressive voters in recent elections, but haven't moved that much on economic issues (I guess promising to not balance the budget it something).

[DC Al Fine]

The child benefit expansion was a progressive move, but I guess you could balance that with the middle class tax cut and the CPP reform on the right. The Liberals have also made some progressive noises on stuff like aboriginals and health care funding, but those aren't quite rah rah, rally the troops issues.

[Famous Mortimer]

Policy-wise, the difference between the Liberals and the NDP is much less than the difference between Hillary and Bernie.

They should merge but they refuse to because of historical momentum and the culture of their voters.

[DC Al Fine]

Policy-wise, the difference between the Liberals and the NDP is much less than the difference between Hillary and Bernie.

They should merge but they refuse to because of historical momentum and the culture of their voters.

What would that achieve?  A political coalition with ~2/3 of the vote isn't remotely sustainable, especially in a Westminster system.

[Hatman 🍁]

No way a socialist party is going to merge with a neo-liberal party. Not everywhere has to be just like the US.

[Famous Mortimer]

No way a socialist party is going to merge with a neo-liberal party. Not everywhere has to be just like the US.

No way are they going to merge, I agree but it's not because of an irreconcilable ideological gap. The NDP is a market socialist party at its most radical. None of its leaders support the abolition of capitalism or nationalizing all business/transferring ownership of business to the workers. They merely want more welfare. People with such views often work with or within neo-liberal centre-left parties, including many people currently already in the Liberal Party.