Is Canada slipping into a 'one-and-done' party leader pattern?

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When Ontario Liberal Leader Steven Del Duca said he would resign in the wake of last week's provincial election, he became the latest addition to a big group of Canadian party leaders to get only one kick at the electoral can.

Conservative leaders Andrew Scheer and Erin O'Toole only got one shot. Liberal leaders Stéphane Dion and Michael Ignatieff were afforded just one opportunity each. Iain Rankin in Nova Scotia and Andrew Wilkinson in B.C. each only had a single chance to win.

Almost all of those leaders resigned. But it certainly appeared they were quitting, amid internal party pressures, to avoid the embarrassment of being ousted. 

It's not so for every leader. On the same night that Del Duca resigned after one election as leader, Andrea Horwath resigned after four atop Ontario's NDP. Stephen Harper lost his first election, before winning the next three. Robert Stanfield got three strikes before Joe Clark took over the federal Tories. The most extreme examples, Wilfred Laurier and Mackenzie King, each led their parties in seven elections, with a few losses sprinkled in among the victories.

These days, party leaders who lose elections often (but not always) resign. Winning no doubt helps with longevity, but for those who lose, is the cutthroat "one-and-done" model on the rise?

Western University political scientist Cristine de Clercy says, while there is a general lack of patience with leaders these days, it doesn't make sense to think of it as a one-way trend.

"I think we're just in another period, as we've had in the past, where public and party expectations around leaders are very stringent. And if leaders can't win, then they're out," she said.   

The reason, de Clercy says, comes down to expectations. Leaders who fail to live up to the promise they represented to the party are left by the wayside, which is why Del Duca bowed out, she says. 

The Liberals went from seven seats in 2018 to only eight seats in the recent Ontario election, and again came in third.

"The magnitude of the results last week simply were not expected," de Clercy said. "Just to sketch out an alternate hypothesis, if the Liberals had believed that they would receive no seats last week and they got eight seats, he looks like a hero."

She emphasizes that the expectations set by parties are not always "necessarily reasonable" — so it's not all about the leader's performance.

Alex Marland, a political scientist at Memorial University of Newfoundland, agrees that expectations are the main variable that determine whether a party leader has to face the music after a losing campaign.

But he also says the stakes are now generally higher for leaders, given their expanded role in politics and being more tied up with the party brand.