The NDP and Its Inability to Garner Support Among the Poor.

Essay by tammydaleUniversity, Bachelor'sB, October 2003

download word file, 4 pages 0.0

Downloaded 32 times

The New Democratic Party views themselves as democratic socialists and the defenders of the economically disadvantaged. Democratic socialism seeks to liberate the individual from the inequalities and exploitation of the capitalist system and believes in equality of the condition not just of the opportunity. They don't believe in privatization and believe that the well being of citizens is the most important goal. The NDP is associated with the left and with that comes ideas about egalitarianism and collectivism. Why then would the people that the NDP are fighting for not regularly vote for their policies? I believe that because their political ideology and agenda is so focused on only one social class of people, this alienates and scares a lot of people. There is also a stigmatization associated with the NDP, which some people might not want to be a part of. The fact that the NDP is very structured in its ideas and principles makes it a very serious and potentially radical vote.

If the NDP were to broaden their campaign and try to appeal to more than one social class they would receive more support.

The principles of the NDP are based on providing for the lower class. However, there just isn't a big enough lower class society to have any type of impact on Election Day. The NDP has most of there support on the Atlantic coast. This is mostly due to the Maritimes high unemployment rates. This same result can be found throughout the country. If you go province to province the higher the unemployment rate is the higher the support is for the NDP. This is where the NDP has made a great mistake because by focusing only on the economically disadvantaged they have limited themselves to only one-third of Canada's voting class. While there...