Mulcair elected new leader of NDP

“The challenge that confronts us is … a failure of leadership and that is a failure we intend to reverse,” said Thomas Mulcair, addressing the current state of federal politics, during his speech as the newly announced leader of the New Democrats this evening.

After the fourth round of voting, NDP members elected Mulcair to replace the late Jack Layton as party leader. Mulcair surpassed the 51 per cent margin (with 57.2 per cent), beating candidate Brian Topp for the position.

The announcement was made shortly after 9 p.m., after voting had been extended due to difficulties voters faced accessing the polling website. The root cause of the problems with the NDP’s website have not been clarified, however, rumours have surfaced that an external attack was made, overloading the servers.

In his victory speech, Mulcair addressed concerns with the government, concluding, “We will unite our country.”