In a surprising result given the party’s history of not forcibly ousting its leaders, delegates at the New Democratic Party’s (NDP) convention this past weekend voted to hold a new leadership election, ending Thomas Mulcair’s reign as NDP leader. Left politics in Canada has now entered a period that could see its reinvigoration or crushing defeat.

The event that occasioned Mulcair’s booting, of course, was the NDP’s disastrous showing in the October federal election. When the race began, the social-democratic NDP — the official opposition party for the first time in its history — sat atop the polls. Eleven weeks later, the NDP lost fifty-one of its ninety-five seats and looked on as its share of the vote plunged 11 percentage points. Recent polls have not delivered any better news. The NDP’s support sits at 12 percent, a seven-point decline from October. Justin Trudeau and the Liberals are at a whopping 51 percent.

The NDP isn’t faring well at the provincial level either. The Manitoba NDP, after governing for seventeen years, will likely lose power in the provincial election later this month.