The CCF quickly established itself as a major party in BC: for all but five years between 1933 and 1972, the CCF/NDP was the Official Opposition to the Liberal, Conservative and Social Credit governments.

Seven leaders of the NDP have served as premier of British Columbia: Dave Barrett, Mike Harcourt, Glen Clark, Dan Miller, Ujjal Dosanjh, John Horgan and David Eby.

The CCF regained their former contingent of seven MLAs but lost official opposition status to the reconstituted British Columbia Conservative Party.

The government hoped to prevent the CCF from winning in a three-party competition, but they did not realize that a new fourth party was on the rise: the BC Social Credit League.

When Social Credit lost a motion of no confidence in the legislature in March 1953, Winch argued that the CCF should be allowed to try to form a government rather than the house being dissolved for an early election.

This period coincided with the height of the Cold War, and Bennett effectively used the scare tactic of the "Red Menace" against the CCF, referring to them as the "socialist hordes".

Each time, Bennett used the "Red Menace" tactic as a wedge issue against the NDP and its leaders: Robert Strachan and, in the 1969 general election, Thomas Berger.

The NDP passed a considerable amount of legislation in a short time, including establishing the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia and the Agricultural Land Reserve.

The NDP drove the small BC Liberal caucus to abandon their leader David Anderson for the Social Credit Party, as did one of the two Tories elected in 1972.

The NDP, under the leadership of former Vancouver mayor Mike Harcourt, won with 41 percent of the popular vote, which was one percentage point lower than the share the party had lost with in 1986.

Harcourt's first two years in government were characterized by a notably social democratic policy agenda, which included increases in welfare spending and rates.

[9][10] Broadcast province-wide, his speech inaugurated a set of welfare reforms enacted between 1993 and 1995; these were similar to those adopted by new Progressive Conservative provincial governments elected in Alberta and Ontario in the same time period.

Unlike the reforms of the Harris and Klein governments in the other two provinces noted, the BC Benefits package of cutbacks and restrictions in social assistance eligibility was bundled with a childcare bonus paid to low- and medium-income families.

Harcourt's "Peace in the Woods" pact, which brought together traditionally warring environmental groups and forest workers' unions, began to collapse when Harcourt's cabinet exempted an environmentally sensitive area of Vancouver Island, Clayoquot Sound, from its province-wide mediation process for land-use conflicts, the Commission on Resources and the Environment (CORE).

Some key environmental leaders, such as David Suzuki and Colleen McCrory, became alienated from the NDP and shifted their support to the Green Party in the 1996 provincial election.

Although low in the polls for much of his term in office, Harcourt and his newly appointed attorney general, Ujjal Dosanjh, succeeded in regaining substantial public support by taking a hard line against an aboriginal group's occupation of a farmer's field in the Cariboo region of the province.

In what became known as the Gustafsen Lake standoff, Dosanjh led the largest-scale police operation in British Columbia history as the government tried to regain control.

With less than 72 hours before a planned election call, and with the NDP high in the polls for its hard line against welfare recipients and aboriginal and environmental radicals, the party's provincial office was raided by RCMP officers as part of an ongoing investigation of illegal use of charity bingo money by former provincial cabinet minister and MP Dave Stupich (for which Stupich was later convicted on two counts).

He effectively portrayed the Liberals' new leader, former Vancouver mayor Gordon Campbell, as a pawn of big business and a dangerous right-wing extremist.

Shortly after the election, it was discovered that the 1995–96 and 1996–97 fiscal years did not have the balanced budgets on which Clark had campaigned but small deficits of approximately $100 million.

This became a political scandal following a report by the BC Auditor General, which stated that the finance minister acted in a way "inconsistent with the principle of responsible and prudent fiscal planning" when drawing up the projected revenue numbers.

[20] By mid-1999, an obvious rift had appeared in the administration as Attorney General Dosanjh and Finance Minister Joy MacPhail challenged Clark's legitimacy.

The party and province endured a few chaotic months of government with frequent cabinet shuffles following a police raid[17] on Clark's home before he stepped down as premier.

[23] Dan Miller, the longest-serving member of the legislature, stepped in as premier and interim party leader during an acrimonious leadership race between Dosanjh, maverick West Kootenay MLA Corky Evans, and Wilson (who had been persuaded to fold his Progressive Democratic Alliance party into the NDP and join Glen Clark's cabinet in 1999).

[26] Having bottomed out at 15 percent in the polls,[27] the Dosanjh government attempted to capitalize on the new premier's high personal approval rating with their remaining year in power.

Midway through the campaign, Dosanjh conceded defeat in a pre-recorded message and asked the electorate to give the NDP a chance as a strong opposition party.

However, the Speaker of the Assembly, former Social Credit cabinet minister-turned BC Liberal Claude Richmond, recognized MacPhail as leader of the Opposition.

Ultimately, Richmond's position gradually won out, and he was able to ensure that the remains of the NDP were provided the resources of an official party.

The low-key leadership campaign was contested by establishment favourite and former Victoria School Board chair Carole James, Oak Bay City Councillor Nils Jensen, former MLAs Leonard Krog and Steve Orcherton, and a few minor candidates.

The election call drew criticism, as it violated the agreement with the Green Party, and came during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic; journalists noted that Horgan and the NDP had been doing well in the polls at the time.