The leadership race that was set in motion for Canada’s federal New Democratic Party after then-leader Thomas Mulcair was ousted at the party’s April 2016 convention is entering its home stretch. The cutoff point for new members to sign up to vote is August 17, with the final two debates soon after. By mid-October, the winner will be announced.

In the 2012 leadership campaign, party members decided to play it safe and go with the centrist Mulcair, who was seen as the person who could lead the NDP into government for the first time at the federal level. But Trudeaumania came along in 2015, and the NDP went from the second largest party in parliament back to its traditional third-party status.

That result was seen by many NDP supporters as a result of a very cautious campaign in which the NDP promised to balance the budget and did not attack the Trans-Pacific Partnership during the campaign’s opening days. Trudeau, meanwhile, was able to outflank the NDP from the left by promising deficit spending to revive a stagnant economy.