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It finally hit me the other day.

After years on the political sidelines, Saskatchewan’s NDP partisans are back with a renewed sense of purpose.

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Years ago, I wrote a book on Saskatchewan politics that became a Canadian bestseller. Entitled Left Out: Saskatchewan’s NDP and the Relentless Pursuit of Mediocrity, the book examined Saskatchewan’s once natural governing party, the NDP.

Born of the Great Depression, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation was elected in 1944 and, through its name change to the New Democratic Party (NDP), became the dominant political culture of this province for more than two generations.

With the exception of only 16 years from the 1940s until 2007, no party succeeded in beating the NDP for long.

Anyone audacious enough to topple the NDP was allowed just two terms in office before being swept from power, usually in tatters, discredited and not long for this world.

Just as the 1960s Liberal party under Ross Thatcher fell to ruin, the Grant Devine Progressive Conservatives of the 1980s virtually disappeared.

Although historically successful, the NDP rarely got a majority of votes — only twice in over 60 years has it won an election with more than 50 per cent of the popular vote.