Can Manitoba Liberals be a contender again?

For more than five decades the Manitoba Liberal Party has not been a real contender for power in the province.

A notable exception might be the strong performance in the 1988 election, in which the party achieved official Opposition status (20 seats in the 57-seat legislature) as a result of a fortuitous combination of circumstances for the party andthe capacity of its leader Sharon Carstairs to take advantage of a short-lived political window of opportunity.

The momentum of that breakthrough could not be sustained, however.

Since Sept. 27, 2025, the Liberals have been led by Willard Reeves, who had previously run unsuccessfully twice in the constituency of Fort Whyte. Reeves became leader by acclamation, a sign of the prolonged slump and poor political prospects for the party. He is the 19th regular or interim MLP leader since 1961, compared to 13 PC leaders and only six for the NDP.

High leadership turnover reflected and reinforced a lack of ideological and policy consistency within the Liberal party. It always labelled itself as centrist, which supposedly meant the advantage of flexibility to move from centre-right to centre left messaging as the competitive political context changed. However, it also meant that the party presented a blurred image to voters in terms of what it stood for.

After the breakthrough NDP victory in the 1969 election, politics in Manitoba became more polarized and the Liberals tended for a time to get crowded out by the ideological rhetoric of left versus right politics. Then, after a decade in opposition (1988-1999) Gary Doer led the NDP back to power with moderate policy messages and promises of balanced budgets, thereby occupying centrist political space the Liberals might aspire to gain.

Another obstacle for the Liberals was some not-easily-measured amount of strategic voting, which refers to situations in which voters are so strongly motivated to remove the governing parties that they decline to consider a third option.

Both of the main parties often campaign in ways to make the Liberals appear irrelevant. Some opinion surveys indicate that people who identify as “centrist” are less motivated to vote than those who identify as right or left.

The simple plurality electoral system that translates votes into seats tends to reward parties like the NDP that have concentrated territorial support, while parties like the Liberals, with more dispersed support, may get a significant share of the popular vote but gain few seats.

Since 1969, the high point for the party was in 1988 when it won 20 seats based on 35 per cent of the popular vote.

Between elections, its polls typically record support in the mid-teens, but in most elections that support drops, in the worst case to 6.5 per cent of the popular vote in 1981 when it elected no one. In three other elections — 1999, 2011 and 2023 — the Liberal party was reduced to just one seat.

Currently, with an unelected leader and only one MLA, the Liberals are at a disadvantage because they do not qualify for official party status (which requires four seats) in the legislature. Lack of status means fewer staff and limited procedural opportunities to challenge the government.

Beyond the legislature, the party has faced difficulty attracting members, maintaining constituency associations, recruiting strong candidates, and raising money in part to support headquarters capacity and central advertising.

The relationship between the provincial and federal wings of the Liberal party has been a mixed blessing. A popular Liberal prime minister and governing party can help the provincial party, but the reverse can also be true. Ambitious“liberal-minded” individuals are more likely to gravitate to the national wing of the party. Both wings of the party face difficulty attracting strong voter support outside of central and south Winnipeg.

Reeves might react to the above by saying “that is good diagnosis but what is your prescription for making the party a contender again?” My answer would be that it will take a combination of actions and some political luck.

It is now known that Mr. Reeves will run in River Heights, a constituency where former MLP leader Jon Gerrard was the MLA for an extended period. After securing the nomination, Mr Reeves must work immediately to become better known in the constituency, while simultaneously finding ways to connect with voters across the province.

Reeves must clarify what the party stands for under his leadership. The previous leader, Dougald Lamont, claimed the party was more to the left than the NDP. The party cannot be everything to everyone. Rather than agonizing over where it resides on the political spectrum, the party would be advised to identify a half dozen practical policy ideas which, with the right messaging, might be attractive to a broad range of voters.

The MLP should drop the pretence that it is campaigning to form government and instead make the case that a strong third party offers voters greater choice, would moderate hyper-partisanship in the legislature, and hold governments more accountable.

Early candidate selection is crucial to attracting members and raising money. Rather than striving to run a full slate of candidates, the party should recruit well-regarded individuals to run in constituencies where there is a reasonable prospect of winning and encourage them to stand at least twice.

If it took the MLP decades to slip to a distant third place, it will take patience and perseverance to rebuild to become a real contender for power. That might happen sooner if it can take advantage of political luck in the form of favourable circumstances like those which existed in 1988 when it surged to second place.

» Paul G. Thomas is professor emeritus of political studies at the University of Manitoba. This column first appeared in the Winnipeg Free Press.