Opposition Leader Emmalin Pierre loses her own seat as the National Democratic Congress becomes the first party in its history to win back-to-back general elections
By Calvin G Brown (WiredJA) Grenada’s Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell has delivered the most lopsided electoral verdict the Spice Isle has seen since Keith Mitchell’s clean sweeps of 2013 and 2018, leading his National Democratic Congress (NDC) to victory in 14 of the country’s 15 constituencies in Thursday’s snap general election.
Preliminary figures from the Parliamentary Elections Office put the NDC at 37,369 votes, or 61 per cent of valid ballots, against 22,567 votes, or 36.8 per cent, for the New National Party (NNP). That is a popular-vote margin of 14,802 in a country of just over 97,000 registered electors. Turnout was 63.3 per cent, down from 69.5 per cent in 2022.
The result transforms a 9-6 House of Representatives into a near one-party chamber. The NNP, which held every one of the 15 seats as recently as June 2022, has been reduced to a single constituency, St George North West, where Dr Adrian Joseph polled 2,052 votes to hold the seat Keith Mitchell represented for 42 years before retiring from electoral politics earlier this year.
History made at Pearls
For the NDC, founded in 1987, the night carried a significance beyond the arithmetic. The party formed governments in 1990 and 2008 but was turned out at the following election on both occasions. Thursday was the first time it has ever been re-elected.
Addressing jubilant supporters at the old Pearls Airstrip on the northeast coast in the early hours of Friday, the 49-year-old attorney kept his remarks brief, telling the crowd that the morning was for celebration and that the real speech would come later in the day. “This is your victory. This is your making of history,” he said, adding that Grenada “is about its people, not its things.”
Mitchell, who called the poll a year before it was constitutionally due in 2027, declared Friday, November 6 a public holiday.
His own St David seat was never in doubt. He polled 5,318 votes to 2,138 for the NNP’s Noleen Roxanne James Thompson.
Pierre’s gamble fails
The night’s most consequential casualty was Opposition Leader Emmalin Pierre, who had hoped to become the first woman to lead Grenada, Carriacou and Petite Martinique. Instead, she lost her own St Andrew South East seat to Education Minister David Andrew, 2,011 votes to 1,849, reversing the roughly 200-vote margin by which she had beaten him in 2022.
This was the NNP’s first general election under Pierre, a former public relations professional who took over the party leadership from Keith Mitchell in December 2024 and became opposition leader in February 2025. The party ran without the man who had been its electoral engine for four decades, and the results show what the loss cost it.
In a concession statement, Pierre acknowledged that the outcome was not what the party had hoped and worked for, and said democracy demands that the verdict of the population be accepted with dignity and humility. In a message to the prime minister she urged him to “remain steadfast in putting people first.”
Barbadian pollster Peter Wickham was blunter, describing the NNP campaign as a pedestrian effort and noting that Mitchell had now made history twice, first by beating Keith Mitchell’s political juggernaut in 2022, and now by beating the party he left behind.
Where the NDC won
The scale of the sweep is best read constituency by constituency. Five NDC women will sit in the incoming House, among them former Attorney General Claudette Joseph, who moves from the Senate to an elected seat after winning the Town of St George with 1,269 votes against 730 for the Democratic People’s Movement’s Peter David and 536 for the NNP candidate. Joseph had lost the constituency in both 2018 and 2022.
Kerryne James held St John by a far more comfortable margin than the six votes that separated her from the NNP’s Alvin Da Breo in 2022, one of the closest races in Grenadian electoral history. Another of the party’s women, NOW Grenada reported, won by 320 votes to end a 42-year NNP hold on her constituency, while former St Mark’s Secondary School principal De Gannes was among two first-time parliamentarians the NDC sent to the chamber.
Beyond its 2022 base, the NDC captured every one of the six seats the NNP had held, save Joseph’s redoubt in St George North West.
Eight parties contested the election. The Democratic People’s Movement, led by former minister Peter David, polled 1,189 votes nationally without winning a seat, confirming that Grenadian politics remains a two-party affair.
Regional reaction
Congratulations arrived quickly from CARICOM capitals. Trinidad and Tobago’s Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar hailed what she called a resounding victory and praised Grenadians for exercising their democratic rights. Dominica’s Roosevelt Skerrit congratulated his “friend and colleague” on an emphatic win.
In Kingston, Opposition Leader Mark Golding framed the result in ideological terms. In a Facebook post on behalf of the People’s National Party, he called the NDC’s second term “a victory for the people of Grenada, Carriacou and Petite Martinique, and a powerful victory for progressive politics in the Caribbean.” Grenadians, he said, had chosen “leadership that puts people first, that believes in fairness, opportunity, and dignity for all, and that governs with heart and integrity,” and the PNP looked forward to working with Mitchell’s government “to build a stronger, fairer, and more united Caribbean.”
A CARICOM observer mission is due to deliver its preliminary assessment on Friday afternoon. The figures remain provisional pending the official recount by the Parliamentary Elections Office, though no serious challenge to the result has been signalled.
For a region accustomed to pendulum politics, Grenada’s verdict is striking. Mitchell asked for a renewed mandate a year early and was handed something closer to a blank cheque. The question now is whether a parliament with a single opposition voice can deliver the scrutiny that even a popular government needs.
