The world must be looking a lot like 1993 to the federal NDP. That was the last time New Democrats saw the party reduced from position of influence in Ottawa, to an afterthought sloughed off to a corner of irrelevance, far from the important seats in the House of Commons.

That was the same election that saw Progressive Conservatives, as they were known at the time, all but obliterated. Thanks to an internal split, PC leader Kim Campbell, successor to Brian Mulroney, won just two seats (losing her own) while the upstart Reform party under Preston Manning captured 52. It took a decade to repair the rupture, handing Liberals three easy majorities in the process.