Liberals win in New Brunswick

My congratulations to Shawn Graham on his fine victory. Back in 2003 when he was first Liberal leader, no one thought he had a chance at every becoming premier, so obviously he and his team have much to be proud of. I was hoping for Bernard Lord to win myself, but considering that the two parties aren't too far apart, I could really live with either party winning. Unlike their federal counterparts, the New Brunswick Progressive Conservatives are pretty close to the centre much like the old PCs, while the New Brunswick Liberals are more or less the same as the federal Liberals. With the closeness of the race, it appears this was about it being a time for change instead of deep dissatisfaction with the Lord government, although interestingly enough it appears that Bernard Lord may have won the popular vote, but due to the fact it was more concentrated than the Liberals, it prevented him from winning the election. If the final results show this happening, this will not be the first, but a series of such results such as BC in 1996, Quebec in 1998, and Saskatchewan in 1999. This will off course bring up the idea once again whether we should go to proportional representation or not, but that is a totally different debate. Another interesting note, is both parties saw their share of the popular vote increase, while the NDP fell in the popular vote. Even in the normally polarized British Columbia, the BC Liberals only got 46% of the popular vote, compared to the 47% both the NB PCs and NB Liberals got, so talk about a two party system at its finest. In terms of federal politics one shouldn't look too much into these results as I almost positive the NDP will do much better in the next federal election in New Brunswick than they did provincially, so unless New Brunswick goes heavily one way or another, I doubt either the Liberals or Tories will get 47% in New Brunswick. The one thing that should be interesting to see is if Bernard Lord decides to run federally. Certainly I think he would be a far better prime-minister than Stephen Harper, although considering all the Randy White type neanthandrals still left in the Conservative caucus, I am not sure how united he would be able to keep the party.

UPDATE:

Final results have shown that Bernard Lord did win the popular vote despite losing the election. It will be interesting to see people's response on this, since this is not the first time this has happened in Canadian politics. I can just see the calls for scrapping the first past the post system reving up a notch.