The fourth round of voting is underway at the NDP leadership convention—finally.
The fourth round of voting is underway at the NDP leadership convention—finally.
After several delays caused by a possibly nefarious flood of traffic to the NDP’s voting website, party president Rebecca Blaikie announced the results a short while ago.
The race is still Thomas Mulcair’s to lose, as he sits in front with 43.8 per cent of the vote. He’s trailed by Brian Topp with his 31.6 per cent. Nathan Cullen, whom many didn’t expect to make it this far, has been knocked out for placing last on the third ballot. He raked in 24.6 per cent of the vote. The first candidate to 50 per cent gets the NDP crown.
Much of the story today has been about voter turnout. Of the roughly 130,000 NDP members, 62,736 voted in the third round of this leadership race. About 55,000 of those ballots were cast in advance of the convention.
The other intriguing point here is the denial-of-service attack which knocked out the party’s electronic voting system this afternoon. “Somebody outside the system was attempting to mess with our system,” said Brad Lavigne, principal secretary to Nycole Turmel. “They’ve jammed up the lines.”
Now that they appear to have things cleared up, the convention has gotten back to the business of choosing Jack Layton’s successor. If Topp is to come from behind and defeat Mulcair, he’ll need to rein in a large majority— roughly 80 per cent—of Cullen’s former supporters. The general consensus is that that’s a long shot. But as many speakers have energetically shouted from the stage here this weekend, “don’t let them tell you it can’t be done.”
Final results to come.