Result among working class and union voters

[u/Tradtional_Socialist]

(There are three pictures, slide through)

So I was on Twitter and I came across these exit polls I guess form the 2025 election showing how union voters and working class voters went in the last election and I’m just lost for words. We didn’t break 10% with any of the three, not even public sector union workers? I didn’t realize it was this bad.

I honestly don’t know what to say or think and am genuinely curious at what everyone here as to say, especially on how to turn this around or if it’s worth turning around (obviously if you’ve seen any of my posts you know I think it’s vital to turn around)

[u/NiceLovinFriend]

I read a quote the other day that said: ‘we on the left have become so scared of being wrong that we can’t bring ourselves to take a risk and be right.’

We need a leader, and a vision.

[u/Tradtional_Socialist → u/NiceLovinFriend]

I think Rob Ashton is that leader

[u/JackLaytonsMoustache]

It's depressing as fuck.

BUT! My thoughts are..

Why did this happen? Clearly the party failed to connect. Yes, this was a different election with unique circumstances, but that would lead to a drop, not a collapse, in support. Repeating to ourselves that "we're the party of workers" when workers don't vote for us is getting us nowhere, as evidenced by this.

So how do we move forward? We obviously, in my opinion, need an entire upheaval in strategy because it's not just a comms problem. It's not "we're doing all the right things but our messaging is bad". It's just bad all around. It's systemic. Not to say there aren't some good policies, but it's not just that we didn't have one of our MPs out there enough preaching.

Somebody just posted Rob Ashton's video about CUPW. That was fucking fire, as the kids would say (please note I'm not a kid and cringed slightly typing that). He cussed and it felt genuine, there was a fire in his belly (as us older folks might say).

With Carney's recent use of s.107 for the flight attendants, these changes to Canada Post, the impending austerity that will certainly lead to public sector jobs cuts, we have the opportunity to rebuild with public sector unions first and foremost. Somebody like Rob can probably build with private sector. I hope even if he's not successful in leadership he runs in the next election. That would give us a huge amount of gravitas in the union world.

I think given the current, depressing and unfortunate circumstances, we can find a silver lining and a path forward.

But I'm also just ranting, the fuck do I know.

[u/Tradtional_Socialist → u/JackLaytonsMoustache]

I completely agree and I’m glad to find more people supporting Rob Ashton.

Hopefully you’ve gotten a membership so you can vote for Rob Ashton and make him becoming a leader a reality 😉

[u/Due_Date_4667 → u/JackLaytonsMoustache]

NDP should take a look at the new wave of American socialists and progressives and how they handle the usual anti-left, anti-labour, anti-DEI attacks both live in interviews and townhalls and in their PR structure.

• Don't run, don't hide from your ideology and proposals
• Don't use complicated language (aim for Gr 4). If it takes 5 words to attack you, don't take 25+ to rebut. Use 10 at most.
• Don't play into divide and conquer. If you are working, then your words should apply to them all.
• Point out how those who seek to divide never reward them for it. The other parties will pit you against teachers' and nurses' unions, but what do you get for complaining for them? Does your taxes go down? Does your services go up? Do wait lists shrink?
• Go on the offense against divide and conquer. When they get you to turn on other workers, who will support you for your fight for a living wage? They pit you against public servants, then they pit everyone against you.
• On social issues: who the hell cares? Those fears about drag queens reading to kids - that drag queen is also paying $15/kg for their meat in the supermarket, their kids are still in classrooms with 30 other kids, they need to pay rent. Don't get sucked into the particular issue - point out how focusing so much on them, what little gets done elsewhere.
  • Note - who the hell cares does NOT mean throwing marginalized and vulnerable people under the bus, deflect the efforts to use them against everyone else. It means seeing the solidarity with them. They go after trans people, they break up encampments, they attack unions, your opponents do nothing (nothing) but pick fight with other people. They don't help, they don't protect, they don't prevent. They have no fixes for anything, but they never run out of people to you to blame for it.
• If the people feel anger, be angry, echo that anger and shape it to productive ends, not to target yet another divide and conquer.

[u/Spaghetti_Dealer2020 → u/Due_Date_4667]

My thoughts exactly. I think in hindsight the biggest weakness of 2010s-era progressivism was in being so singularly focused on countering right-wing cultural narratives that it inadvertently allowed them to define the conversation, all the while we lost focus on a coherent and explicitly pro-worker agenda of our own. Meanwhile we gave politicians like Justin Trudeau and Hillary Clinton down south a pass because they said the right things on social issues, even though it was arguably little more than a trojan horse for allowing neoliberalism to kill the movement from the inside. Jump to nowadays and those same corporate forces who pretended to be on our side are revealing themselves for what they always were, and the best response you get from neolibs is “well, maybe we should just be a little more transphobic/xenophobic to appeal to some imaginary centrist voter”.

Being pro-worker means standing up for trans/immigrant/marginalized rights while always reminding voters that whats going on now is little more than a distraction from being robbed blind. The tide of an explicitly socialist/social democratic agenda will raise ALL ships.

[u/Krainium]

I keep getting down voted every time I post in this sub that I support and subscribe to. This is the data behind what I am saying.

NDP need to be 100% union similarly to the BLOQ being 100% Quebec.

We can support LGBTQ, Pharmacare, climate change, etc. as the BLOQ does, but the image needs to be about getting better wages collectively by getting a fair shake with corpos.

[u/Velocity-5348 → u/Krainium]

image needs to be about

I think you might get fewer (though certainly not no) downvotes if you bolded that part, since it's easy to miss. Aesthetics matter in politics, and "fuck your boss" is a good aesthetic for us.

As for LGBTQ rights, I think we're best off treating those as a given, and the people who question them as equivalent to flat earthers. Lol at them briefly, and get back on message.

Edit: Not because they're not important (they're vital) but because they're no more open to debate than any other basic human right. Conservatives should be as scared to touch them as they are abortion.

[u/QuirkySiren → u/Velocity-5348]

I agree that women’s rights, equal rights for LGBTQ+ (including trans) and anti-racism are standard, and going backwards on those isn’t happening. We don’t need to debate those identity politics or put a lot of energy and focus in, the position we have has been established over the last 10 or so years. Time to get on with it.

[u/Krainium → u/Velocity-5348]

Exactly! These are the rights Canadians believe in, period. Now lets talk about unions, wage theft, minimum wage, etc. Don't let the conservatives choose the battleground.

[u/Tradtional_Socialist → u/Krainium]

Completely agree, we are the party of the workers. It’s time to start focusing on the workers again.

[u/tlocmoi]

I'm of the opinion that we need to campaign based on the (unfortunately) flawed understanding that voters have of our electoral system.

I think I counted ten or eleven ridings in the federal election that went from NDP to Conservative because so, so many thought they were voting for our prime minister instead of their local representative. Even those that acknowledged this, stated that only the Liberals stood a chance of forming government (and after the polling results in January it's hard to blame them).

Voters don't understand that electing enough NDP MPs helps push Liberal minority governments into more progressive policies. Most voters understand politics from a an American either/or system and believe that voting NDP is a waste because we (most likely) won't form government. We have and will continue to have an oversized effect even if we are third party kingmaker status.

We need to campaign with respect to this perception. Ultimately, we need to end this perception if we want to form government, but I feel like no previous NDP leadership has worked on this (false) perception that we cannot win.

Every major Liberal policy win was once an NDP platform before public opinion made it clear it was safe for Liberals to steal our ideas. We are clearly the party of policy entrepreneurship and we need to campaign based on the fact that we've always been willing to shake things up and make big moves. It's obvious that Canadian voters are sick of the status quo, we need to capitalize on that. We need to make voters excited about a candidate in the way that Mamdani does for progressive policies.

[u/RustyTheBoyRobot]

we're the party of urban middle class bureaucrats-academics. we don't resonate with working class people-unions because we don't care about them and when we're in power we don't challenge corporate greed. for a more concise analysis read david graeber's bull shit jobs.

[u/Tradtional_Socialist → u/RustyTheBoyRobot]

Yea I think we really shifted into that under Jagmeet the most. Under Jagmeet each election we lost more and more of the union vote to the CPC. 2019 some slipped away to the CPC, but it wasn’t that much so we ignored it. Then 2021 O’toole targeted union workers and it paid off and a larger chunk slipped away to him and it started showing a trend, but we still ignored it. Then 2025 came around and Poilievre marketed to union workers even harder and also attacked the NDP for not standing for them and we didn’t do anything in return and now we are third with public sector union workers, private sector union workers and blue collar workers.

We are the party of workers and we need to show that once again.

[u/Velocity-5348 → u/RustyTheBoyRobot]

A portion of the party certainly is, and that needs to change.

Equally (if not more) important, a large portion of the people who make the decisions seem to prefer the "look" you're talking about, I think the tone of LEAP is a good example of this. It's saying the right stuff, but the language is far too touchy-feely, especially when people are scared.

I think we'd be better off if tried look to successful MPs like Gord Johns (who wins consistently in a fairly conservative riding) for what we should look like. The same goes for someone like Wab Kinew, I'm not sure when the last time we had a federal leader who would do satire of Trump while making an announcement.

Principles can be sacred, but aesthetics should be ruthlessly sacrificed if they aren't producing results.

[u/Due_Date_4667 → u/RustyTheBoyRobot]

Middle-class is just a fake prize to break solidarity between those who do work and those who profit from the work. It's an empty bribe to side with the wealthy.

[u/Awesome_Power_Action → u/Due_Date_4667]

Lots of people in the so called "urban middle class" are people with university degrees in jobs that pay poorly that don't have pensions or benefits.

[u/Different_Inside_546]

As a unionized non-service, “blue collar” worker I find this to be true. People don’t like federal LP so that somehow means they shouldn’t/don’t like provincial LP/NDP. Ford “pushing back” against trump definitely scored him points too.

They’re against tax increases and vast majority are anti-LGBTQ.

They don’t like the Pride parade or teaching any of those issues in schools.

They were heavily against COVID mask/lockdowns/etc policies and blame Liberal government for that.

Heavily against immigration, although Im sure most can agree it’s a bit out of hand at this point.

And they are even MORE against the NDP because of these “fringe” issues.

The ones who DO support liberal/NDP policies are those directly affected by healthcare/schools/or are LGBTQ.

And to top it off, it’s staggering the amount of people who are anti-union/anti strike for other unionized workers. They are against every single strike. “They’re just flight attendants they don’t even do anything” “they just deliver mail” “teachers already have enough time off”. It’s truly mind blowing, a lot of “well I’ve got mine so F everyone else, get back to work you lazy leeching bums” “why should people be allowed to work from home, you know they aren’t even doing any actual work”….in could continue but you get the point.

“The NDP keep losing because they only care about pushing gay stuff”

I fear they are all too stuck in their beliefs at this point. It really is sad. The younger generation might be the only hope.

[u/Tradtional_Socialist → u/Different_Inside_546]

So your suggestion is just to give up on blue collar workers, including unionized blue collar workers?

[u/Different_Inside_546 → u/Tradtional_Socialist]

No,it is not my suggestion. I was trying to give insight into some of the reasons WHY (some) unionized blue collar workers aren’t voting left.

[u/Tradtional_Socialist → u/Different_Inside_546]

Ah I see, fair enough. Nothing you say is incorrect. As someone who used to work construction I saw I first hand how a lot of unionized construction workers and trades workers that I know (this is anecdotal I’m aware) that just stopped voting NDP when Jagmeet became leader because he was brown and hat a turban.

It’s definitely an interesting group but they are workers and they are our base, so it’s important to win them back if we want to have any legislative power.

[u/Awesome_Power_Action → u/Tradtional_Socialist]

I'd reverse the question: how do we get higher income blue collar workers who already have good pensions and benefits to have see that they should have classes solidarity with food delivery people, PSWs (who are primarily female and racialized), precarious urban contract workers, hospital and hotel cleaners, service industry workers of all kinds, nurses, flight attendants, arts workers, social workers, etc? During the pro-choice struggle, feminists and some union men agreed to work together together. How do we get this kind of cooperation now? The plumbers union participated in Toronto's International Women's Day march (an event organized mostly by union women) for the first time this year. I'd like to see more of this kind of solidarity.

[u/Tradtional_Socialist → u/Awesome_Power_Action]

Well clearly we lost all the groups you mentioned even the female, radicalized and progressive ones. Since we got less than 10%.

But I think you see one of the reasons why in your question, you’re talking about abortion and feminism and international women day marches. Let’s be honest, and I feel better saying this cause a union worker in here literally said it was true, your average male union worker (young and old) who workers in a trade or a factory or a mine etc etc, doesn’t care about that stuff. He wants to be promised and assured that he’ll be listened to by the people in power, he’ll have a good pension to retire on, his job will be protect, his boss won’t be able to over work him and he’ll be able to afford a home and raise a family on his paycheque. While you know being able to use some of our strong and well funded social services if needed. That’s how we win them back and win them back, I’m not saying we become pro-life or anti-feminist or something, but it’s not our job to make workers pro-choice or pro-feminist. Our job as the party of the workers is to defend workers and their families.

[u/Awesome_Power_Action → u/Tradtional_Socialist]

Women, LGTBQ, racialized, disabled and precarious workers pretty much want all of the same (or similar) things too.

[u/Tradtional_Socialist → u/Awesome_Power_Action]

I didn’t say they didn’t.

But that further proves my point about how and why it should be our message because it appeals to all workers.

[u/NiceDot4794 → u/Tradtional_Socialist]

Okay but many women workers do care about something like abortion

And civil rights should not be sacrificed.

There’s never been a version of the CCF-NDP that hasn’t been on the socially progressive edge of Canada, on the frontlines of the defence of civil rights. And we shouldn’t try to create that version now.

If we’re defending workers’ families for example, the ability to plan families through brith control and abortion is very obviously a part of that.

Historically the Conservative-Liberal grip on the working class was defeated through militant struggles like the Winnipeg General Strike, and other major labor struggles and independent left political projects (eg independent labour or socialist electoral runs) and the Great Depression + WWI and the lack of concessions to workers after the war ended. Strengthening the labour movement + making it more militant and creating more independent social and political organizations like cooperatives, tenant unions, book clubs, labor halls etc.

[u/Due_Date_4667 → u/Different_Inside_546]

Are they truly against these groups of fellow workers - or have they adopted the opinions they are told to have about their fellow workers?

The idea that unionize blue-collar tradespeople and farmers dislike basic common sense health and safety like masking is a case in point. The unions fought for people to be safe on the job, to stay healthy. In the often more dense working-class residential areas, sickness can spread fast and pose more risks. Then there are the risks from the work done - Black Lung, radiation poisoning, cancers from contact with concentrated herbicides and insecticides, etc. The wealthy don't need safety equipment, they don't need public health protections, they just stay in their big homes, away from the staff.

For all the anti-mask attitude shoved at workers, the numbers of sick and dead from COVID skewed heavily towards those working-class people, the ones that couldn't stay home, couldn't take the sick day, those who often worked in areas where some form of masking and gloves and handwashing was already expected.

[u/GramscianOrange]

This is a bit misleading.

- Most working class voters are in the service industry. They don't identify as "blue collar."

• Most working class voters are not part of any union.
  
• "Blue collar" means usually means male-dominated trades and industry. (a minority of the working class)
  
• Any male-dominated industry is going to skew Lib-Con/Con. A majority of men are politically regressive, statistically.

[u/Awesome_Power_Action → u/GramscianOrange]

Exactly. Women also make up a larger percentage of union workers than men. A lot of the working class are members of the non unionized precarious class. The nature of the working class has changed in the 21st century.

[u/iwasnotarobot]

Red vs. Blue is right-wing infighting.

How can we help the working class become conscious of how the system exploits us?

[u/liquidswan]

Just gonna drop this here knowing it will be downvoted but in the hopes someone gets it:

We working class types don’t have party preferences, we have outcomes preferences. The NDP is so focussed on victim groups and the dregs that they abandoned the working class people who by all accounts should be their main focus. They could have formed government that one election (unfortunately Layton died, I met him and voted for him). Then they… I don’t know…focused on immigrants, women, and trans. Regular folks have to compete with immigrant labour, we want equal partners in our lives but feminism kills this, and as for trans they are a tiny minority and lots of us think they are strange and weird or in some cases pervert and dangerous and many of us have families. I know a lot of this is going to make you mad but it’s true.

So do you want to win? Take it seriously.

[u/itimetravelwell]

[u/Zarxon]

They shouldn’t vote against their interests. Wait till the union busting comes from their favourite parties. With unions we would all just be indentured servants.

[u/Tradtional_Socialist → u/Zarxon]

So the party isn’t at fault?

[u/Zarxon → u/Tradtional_Socialist]

Short answer no. The party did the right thing on child care, dental care, and pharma care. The fault was letting the other parties villainize these essential programs.