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Monday’s results were awful for a party that had, to the end, ambitions to win at least a handful of ridings across Canada.

The Greens will soon conduct a mandatory leadership review, and if party members have any sense and fortitude, they will congratulate May for her personal win and her contributions as leader, and set to work replacing her as party chief. From May’s own comments, a change of leadership should come as a relief.

The party has gone as far as it will under her watch. Monday’s showing makes clear the Greens have stalled. Consider the party’s results since she took its mantle, after the 2006 federal election in which the Greens, under then-leader Jim Harris, captured 4.5 per cent of votes nation wide.

With May in charge, the Greens increased their vote share to 6.8 per cent in the 2008 election. Encouraging, but not enough to send a single Green candidate to Parliament. May ran then in the Nova Scotia riding of Central Nova against formidable Conservative incumbent Peter MacKay. She finished a distant second.

Three years later, May switched ridings, moving across Canada to Sidney, B.C. and the riding of Saanich-Gulf Islands. Her party had determined she would have a good chance of winning that seat, and the number crunchers were proven correct. May became the first Green Party candidate ever elected to Canada’s Parliament.

But she had spent an inordinate amount of time and party resources campaigning for herself. The Greens suffered elsewhere in the 2011 election, taking a meagre 3.9 per cent of the vote, nationally.