Saint Vincent and the Grenadines: Political Parties & Elections

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines has been governed under a two-party system since the 1970s, dominated by the center-right New Democratic Party and the center-left Unity Labour Party. The New Democratic Party, founded in 1975, first came to power in the early 1980s and held office for roughly seventeen years under a succession of leaders. The Unity Labour Party, formed in 1994 from a merger of earlier left-leaning groups, emerged as its principal rival and eventually supplanted it as the country's dominant political force.

The Unity Labour Party won power in the 2001 general election under Ralph Gonsalves, who went on to become one of the longest-serving elected leaders in the Caribbean. His party retained government through repeated contests, sweeping all twelve seats in the 2005 election and winning again, more narrowly, in 2010 and 2015, as the opposition New Democratic Party struggled to translate a competitive vote share into a parliamentary majority under the country's first-past-the-post system.

That long run ended in November 2025, when Gonsalves and the Unity Labour Party lost office after twenty-four consecutive years in power. The New Democratic Party, led by Godwin Friday, won a decisive majority of seats in the fifteen-member House of Assembly, marking one of the most significant transfers of power in the country's post-independence history and a rare defeat for one of the region's most durable governing parties.