Grenada: Political Parties & Elections

Grenada's party politics since independence from Britain in 1974 has been dominated by a small number of parties. Eric Gairy's Grenada United Labour Party (GULP) governed the newly independent nation until 1979, when it was overthrown by the Marxist-Leninist New Jewel Movement led by Maurice Bishop, which suspended elections during its four years in power. Bishop's 1983 execution and the United States-led military intervention that followed brought a return to parliamentary democracy the following year.

The New National Party (NNP) was formed in August 1984 through a merger of the Grenada National Party, National Democratic Party, and Grenada Democratic Movement, and won 14 of the 15 available seats in that December's general election under Herbert Blaize. The National Democratic Congress (NDC) was founded in 1987 by George Brizan and Francis Alexis in opposition to NNP rule, and took power in 1990 under Nicholas Brathwaite. Keith Mitchell's NNP returned to government in 1995, swept all 15 seats in the 1999 election, and held on with a reduced majority in 2003.

The NDC returned to power in 2008, winning eleven seats to the NNP's four under Tillman Thomas, and the two parties have continued to alternate control of government in the elections since. Now led by Dickon Mitchell, the NDC won a majority in the 2022 general election and remains the governing party. Since independence, third parties have rarely won parliamentary representation, leaving the NNP and NDC as the dominant forces in Grenadian politics.