Canada Elections: Why Did Jagmeet Singh Lose? No, Khalistan is not the Reason

Jagmeet Singh's NDP declined in 3 distinct phases before polling in Canada. Khalistan had nothing to do with it.

(Jagmeet Singh of the NDP recently lost in the Canadian parliamentary elections)

(Vibhushita Singh/The Quint)

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"Backer in chief of Khalistanis" who got payback for "dangerous radical politics".

"If you abandon your own heritage, you will never be trusted to be true to another."

These are some of the ways in which senior Indian media personalities chose to 'celebrate' the defeat of Canadian Sikh politician Jagmeet Singh and his New Democratic Party (NDP) in the recently held Canadian parliamentary elections.

This view stems from some misconceptions about Canadian politics and also about Sikhs in the West.

This is not to say that Jagmeet Singh's defeat is not significant. It is an extremely important development and needs to be analysed objectively, not based on a prejudiced view of Punjab and Sikhs.

In this article, we will try to find out the real reason for Jagmeet Singh's defeat.

But first, let's get something out of the way.

Is Jagmeet Singh a Khalistani?

Whether Jagmeet Singh is a Khalistan supporter or not needs to be based on the public statements he has made.

There is no publicly known statement in which Jagmeet Singh has supported Khalistan or demanded that a separate homeland for Sikhs be carved out from India.

What Singh has said publicly is that people in Canada should have the "right to talk about self-determination, whether it’s in Scotland, Catalonia, or India. I support that right, unequivocally."

"I absolutely draw a distinction between political violence and someone advocating for independence or self-determination," he further added.

This position is not unique to Jagmeet Singh, it is a mainstream Canadian position due to the norms governing freedom of speech in the country. In Canada, people have the right to speak about self-determination within any country. This includes the right to speak about self-determination for provinces within Canada, as was evident from the Quebec referendum.

In fact, many Khalistan advocates in Canada are actually critical of Jagmeet Singh and call him a "leftist" who did "nothing for the Khalistan cause" despite being in an important position. It is possible he may have had social interactions with pro-Khalistan elements. But that may be true of a number of politicians in Canada, given that there are pro-Khalistan advocacy groups active there.

The reason why Jagmeet Singh gets labelled a 'Khalistani' in India is because of the trend to view any activity by Sikhs in the West as "Khalistani".

For instance, when 17 men of Indian origin (not even all Sikhs or Punjabis) were arrested in California, many Indian media houses called them "Khalistanis". When The Quint spoke to the authorities behind the investigation, they categorically told us that the arrested men had nothing to do with Khalistan activism.

Now, back to the reasons behind Jagmeet Singh's defeat.

Why Did Jagmeet Singh Lose?

We are referring here not so much to Jagmeet Singh's loss from his own seat but the defeat of the NDP of which he has been the leader since 2017. He has now resigned from that position. The party's vote share fell from 17.8 percent in the 2021 elections to just 6.3 percent in the recent polls. In terms of seats it fell from 24 to just 7.

There are two elements to this.

The decline of NDP in the last 14 years.

The fall in NDP's support in the last three months before the 2025 elections.

Both are driven by different factors.

The NDP's Decline Over the Years

NDP is a left-of-centre party formed in 1961 as an alliance between the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, a socialist party, and the Canadian Labour Congress, a large national trade union body.

Out of the 21 national elections it has contested since then, its vote share has been between 10-20 percent in 17 of those elections. Its main base has been among labour unions, public sector employees, urban left-wing voters and progressive activists.

NDP's fortunes have often been inversely proportional to those of the Liberal Party, the main centrist party in Canada. For instance, the Liberals have won every time the NDP's vote share has fallen below 10 percent - 1993, 2000 and 2025.

On the other hand, the Liberals were decimated and pushed to third position in 2011 when NDP under Jack Layton secured 30 percent votes and became the main Opposition leader in Canada.

Layton, a third-generation politician, helped the NDP grow beyond its core base in the 2000s. Part of it was due to his charisma and oratory but it was also his ability to reconcile competing interests. He was the son of a 'progressive conservative' MP but the leader of a centre-left party and he was an English-speaker from a French-speaking province, Quebec.

Layton's death due to cancer in 2011, however, put a stop to this growth. The period following Layton's death saw the rise of another third generation politician in Canadian politics, but in the Liberal Party - Justin Trudeau, also from Quebec.

The NDP's decline from 30 percent votes in 2011 back to its 10-20 percent base for the next one decade can be attributed to some extent to the death of Layton and the rise of Trudeau.

It was in the middle of this trend that Jagmeet Singh emerged, taking over the NDP in 2017. Under Singh, the NDP secured 16 percent votes in 2019 and almost 18 percent in 2021. With the Liberals falling short of a majority in 2021, NDP under Singh became the kingmaker of sorts and the party entered into an agreement with the Liberals in 2022. More on that later.

Even in the run-up to the 2025 elections, opinion polls till December 2024 predicted that the NDP would not just maintain its vote share but that it may cross 20 percent. Even in mid-January, the opinion poll by Nanos predicted close to 19 percent votes for NDP nationally.

However, after that things began changing and there was a sharp decline in the NDP's projected vote.

Sharp Decline Just Before 2025 Elections

The NDP's decline before the elections took place in three phases.

By mid-February, the NDP began averaging around 15 percent votes. The 20 percent that seemed achievable a month before, was no longer realistic. This trend continued till mid March. Between mid-March and early April, the NDP's projected vote share plummeted, from 16 percent to about 9 percent. And then the final decline from 9 percent in early April to the eventual result of 6.3 percent on 28 April.

These three-phase fall took place around certain events.

• On 6 January, Justin Trudeau resigned as Prime Minister and as leader of the Liberal Party. It was clear that the Liberals would be fighting the next election under a new leader. Mid-January onwards, the Liberals began staging a recovery. This basically meant that NDP was now unlikely to cross 20 percent.

• The second big event was Donald Trump becoming the President of the United States in January. But from the Canadian perspective, the gamechanger was Trump's statement on 9 February that "Canada would be much better off being America's 51st state".

Trump's statement sparked outrage among many Canadians, who now wanted to vote in a way that answers Trump and preserves Canada's political ethos as being distinct from that of the US. This basically meant preventing a Conservative victory and the best way to do that was to vote back the Liberals. But the party needed a leader. Enter Mike Carney.

• Mike Carney was elected leader of the Liberal Party on 9 March and PM of Canada on 14 March. It is the fortnight following Carney's swearing-in as PM that saw the biggest fall in the NDP's projected vote share - from 16 percent to 9 percent.

However, the nearly three percent fall in the NDP's vote share in April was different from the post-Carney fall in March.

This period witnessed a slight decline in Liberal's projected vote share as well and an increase in the Conservatives' vote share. It is possible that a section of NDP voters tactically shifted to Conservatives to prevent another Liberal term. It is also possible that a section of NDP voters merely decided to stay away due to the election becoming more bipolar.

Therefore, the reasons for Jagmeet Singh's defeat don't lie in Khalistan at all. They lie firmly in the politics of North America, especially, Donald Trump.

The Broader Failure of NDP and Jagmeet Singh

Of course, it can be argued that Singh failed to help the NDP grow beyond its core base. Even among his own community of Canadian Sikhs, the NDP did make some gains but the Liberals remained the predominant choice.

For instance, a 2023 study by iPolitics on political donations showed almost 80 percent of political donations by Sikhs went to the Liberal Party. The NDP was a distant second, though, ahead of the Conservatives.

The failure of the NDP under Singh to grow beyond 20 percent votes, is the same as the failure of many Centre-Left and progressive politicians in many Western democracies - their alienation from working-class and middle-class white voters.

Many such parties, including the Democratic Party in the US, are perceived to be dominated by "educated urban elites" who prioritise social progressivism over working class politics. Progressivism here includes issues like ethnic diversity, gender issues and what in the US are called "culture wars".

This is not to argue that these parties are wrong in raising these issues. The point is that the alienation of working-class white voters creates a vacuum that right-wing populists exploit - Trump in the US, Boris Johnson in the UK and Marine Le Pen in France being good examples.

In the context of Canada, studies indicate that Jagmeet Singh being from a visible ethnic and religious minority, may have been harmed due to the prejudice of racially minded voters.

Did Racism Harm NDP's Prospects Under Jagmeet Singh?

Isaac Hale, a political scientist and Canadian politics expert at Los Angeles' Occidental College, certainly seems to think so.

"NDP vote choice polarised on the basis of racial attitudes following Jagmeet Singh's ascension as party leader. Voters with cold feelings toward racial minorities were less likely to vote for the NDP in 2019 and 2021 (under Jagmeet Singh) than in comparable historical elections," Hale writes in an article in the Canadian Journal of Political Science.

"Racial attitudes are salient in Canadian elections and national parties may face an electoral penalty when selecting non-white party leaders".

Isaac Hale, Canadian politics expert

Hale bases his analyses on survey data from the early 2000s till 2021, excluding the 2011 election as it was an exception driven by other factors.

He says that there is a "statistically significant gap of 4.5 percent" in the NDP's support among voters with "very negative feelings towards racial minorities in the 2004-2015 electoral cycles (pre-Jagmeet Singh) as opposed to the 2019 and 2021 elections (under Jagmeet Singh).

This basically means that voters with negative sentiments towards racial minorities who were open to voting for NDP before 2015, moved away from the party under Jagmeet Singh.

Hale says that like US elections during Barack Obama, there was a degree of political polarisation around racial attitude in Canada as well in the elections in which Jagmeet Singh was in the fray.

"Voters with very warm feelings toward racial minorities are decreasingly supportive of Conservatives, while voters with very cold feelings toward racial minorities are decreasingly supportive of the NDP".

However, he says that while NDP may have lost out among anti-racial minority voters under Jagmeet, it didn't make any sizable gains among voters who had positive sentiments towards racial minorities. The Liberals continued to do well in that demographic.

This means that even for many Canadians who were positive towards racial minorities, it didn't necessarily mean backing a candidate from a visible minority, like Jagmeet Singh.

What is Jagmeet Singh's Legacy?

Jagmeet Singh may have resigned as the head of NDP but he is likely to be around in Canadian politics. However, one can still analyse his legacy as head of the NDP.

In terms of electorally reviving the NDP and taking it to the position it had gained in 2011 under James Layton, Jagmeet Singh's tenure would not be termed as a success.

However, many would argue that he did manage to influence a number of key policy decisions especially during the NDP's confidence and supply agreement with the Liberals from 2022.

This included a national dental care program for low income Canadians, progress towards a national pharmacare program, labour reforms for federally regulated workers, and new taxes on financial institutions.

So when it comes to influencing policy, Jagmeet Singh was probably more successful than some of his predecessors in the NDP.

Interestingly, one issue that he was unable to push through, was getting Canada to recognise the 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom in different parts of India as a "Genocide". Both Liberals and Conservatives didn't support the resolution and Jagmeet Singh accused them of "letting down the Sikh community".

The importance of Jagmeet Singh needs to be seen from a much more long term perspective - from the point of view of the place of Sikhs in Canada, which presently has a higher percentage of Sikhs than any country in the world.

Remember in 1914, the Komagata Maru ship carrying 376 Indians (337 Sikhs, 27 Muslims and 12 Hindus) was sent back by Canadian authorities due to immigration laws that discriminated against Indians. When the ship came back to Budge Budge in Bengal, they were fired upon by the British police, killing at least 20 (For more on that incident, watch the recently released Punjabi film Guru Nanak Jahaz).

Almost exactly 100 years later, the British Columbia Regiment, which was involved in the expulsion of the Komagata Maru from Vancouver, was commanded by a Sikh, Harjit Sajjan, from 2011 until 2014. He later became Canada's Minister of National Defence.

In 2016, PM Justin Trudeau issued a detailed apology for the tragedy.

From that incident to having a Sikh PM candidate from a mainstream party over 100 years later, Canada has come a long way.

The fact that a party with turbaned Sikh PM candidate can get almost 20 percent votes in two national elections in a row in a country where Sikhs are just 2 percent of the population, is no small achievement.

Jagmeet Singh may have lost but certain successes in Canadian politics made by Sikhs are now irreversible.

The political representation of Sikhs is increasing and now cuts across party lines. The Canadian parliament has more Sikhs than the Indian parliament at present.

Due to the efforts of Sikh human rights groups, there is now considerable awareness across the political spectrum in Canada regarding atrocities in Punjab and the 1984 pogrom.

Unfortunately, in India, many observers outside of Punjab, view Jagmeet Singh from the point of view of the Indian state. They resent him for the fact that his views on Punjab, especially the events of the 1980s and 1990s, are different from the dominant Indian narrative and critical of the Indian State and that he is vocal about them.

From the fact that he wears a Dumala (a Sikh turban traditionally associated with warriors) to his public statements, Jagmeet Singh became one of the most scrutinised non-Indian leaders in India.

These biases have little to do with Jagmeet Singh and more to do with New Delhi's view of Sikhs and Punjab.