Elizabeth May may have survived her 2025 leadership review with 80.8% support from the small fraction of Green Party members who bothered to cast a ballot, but the numbers tell a different story than the triumphant spin her inner circle is likely to project. This was not a show of strength, but a desperate attempt to cling to power after publicly begging members to allow her to stay on “just a little longer” — promising all along that she would resign after securing her exit on her own terms. In reality, May has no mandate to continue leading. If anything, her only mandate now is to resign.
Out of 9,877 eligible voters, just 2,499 cast ballots, a mere 25.3% turnout. That means fewer than 2,000 members actually endorsed her leadership. In a party that once boasted nearly 30,000 members, the numbers reveal just how hollow May’s support has become.
The leadership review also underscored just how close the renewal campaign came to forcing a decisive break with the past. Had just 766 additional members voted “No,” Elizabeth May’s support would have dropped below 60% — and forced her immediate resignation.
“With an average of less than 30 paying members in each of the 343 ridings we will have difficulties getting even a half slate of candidates on the ballot in the next election,” warned Alberta-based Green Party influencer Ev Tanaka in a widely circulated post on social media.
The membership decline is nothing short of catastrophic. According to Tanaka, the party had close to 30,000 members in 2020, dropped to 22,000 by the end of 2022, and has now plummeted to fewer than 10,000. This collapse in grassroots participation underscores not only a failure of leadership, but also the perils of centralizing the party around May’s personality cult while pushing aside voices who called for renewal.
May and her defenders point to her 80% endorsement as proof that she retains legitimacy. ““I am humbled by this vote of confidence” said May in a press release “this level of support is very heartening” But context matters. This review was not an open contest of ideas, but a stacked deck. May positioned the vote not as a genuine review of leadership, but as a referendum on her carefully choreographed “succession planning.” She claimed over and over again that rejecting her leadership would plunge the party into chaos, bankruptcy and irrelevance. The message was simple: she was the only saviour capable of fixing the circumstances she created.
Despite the result, May emerges from this process weaker, not stronger. She asked members to give her permission to resign later, and they obliged. But she did not secure a mandate to lead the Greens into the next election or even the next year. She has received a mandate to resign.
If May truly respects the will of the members she has spent months begging to keep her in place, then the path forward is clear: she must finally honour her word and step down before the end of the year.
