MONTREAL—Thomas Mulcair did not have a hand in the NDP’s stunning Nova Scotia setback but he will still take a hit for it.

Taken in isolation the defeat inflicted on outgoing Premier Darrell Dexter’s party Tuesday would be enough to rattle New Democrats from coast to coast. The fact that it is only the latest in a series of poor omens for the NDP compounds the damage to party morale.

Nova Scotia was the first province in Atlantic Canada to experiment with an NDP government. The popular verdict after a single term will do little for the party in the rest in the region.

It is the first time in more than a hundred years that Nova Scotians declined to return an incumbent government for a second mandate.

On Tuesday the NDP fell to third place behind the Tories and the Liberals. Dexter himself lost his seat. Thousands of voters who had supported the New Democrats in the previous election switched to the Liberals. Their share of the popular vote went up 18 points.

Mulcair was not a player in the provincial campaign but Justin Trudeau was, often speaking to standing-room only crowds in NDP-held territory.

It is not hard to see the Nova Scotia campaign as a possible template for the 2015 federal vote.

Polls suggest that if a federal election were held today, Trudeau’s Liberals could sweep much of Atlantic Canada. On average they lead by a margin of two to one.

In a region where the Conservatives’ Employment Insurance reform is deeply unpopular, the Liberals and not the NDP are the beneficiaries of the anti-government backlash and the opposition vote is coalescing behind them.

The Nova Scotia debacle comes on the heels of another damaging setback in British Columbia, where Christy Clark’s Liberals won an election that was widely considered to be the New Democrats’ to lose last spring.

Those two defeats leave gaping holes in the federal NDP narrative that it is ready to govern. No longer can Mulcair point to a successful government in Nova Scotia to shore up his case and, at this point, the NDP is in charge in none of the major provinces.

The federal New Democrats have a long history of grace under adversity. Most Canadians do not need to be convinced that they are effective in the role of government critics. In opposition they have tended to give the exercise of holding a government to account their best and that has remained true under Mulcair’s leadership.

But under Jack Layton, the NDP turned its sights on power. That cultural revolution was accelerated by the positive results of the last federal election. Mulcair’s selection as leader resulted from that psychological leap forward.

The party that chose him was an upbeat one, confident in its capacity to expand its tent in Atlantic Canada and in Western Canada — in no small part on the strength of its provincial foundations in those regions. It was assumed that success in Quebec and a bigger role in Parliament would help breed success elsewhere.

On that basis, Mulcair was selected on the understanding that job one for the new leader would be to keep Quebec in the fold. He remains the party’s best choice to achieve that. But it was also clear that the party would have to look outside the province to bridge the gap that still separated it from government. And on that part of the bargain he had yet to deliver.

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After eighteen months as leader, Mulcair has yet to begin to establish a solid connection with voters in the rest of Canada. He is not so much eclipsed by Trudeau’s impact on the public psyche as failing to register in his own right. The Liberal leader’s appeal and its positive influence on party fortunes only further highlights his NPD counterpart’s failure to grow on non-Quebec voters.

At this juncture Mulcair desperately needs a win to prevent the little that is left of the momentum he inherited from Layton from slipping away. That is easier said than done.

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