The people have spoken, and the message they’ve sent is a complex one. After all, the B.C. Legislature that sits the next time around will have an almost identical make-up to the one that represented us when the writ was dropped.

Consider the similarities: In the 2005 provincial election, 46.03 per cent of the electorate put 46 Liberals, led by Gordon Campbell, in the legislature. Some 41.27 per cent of voters put 33 New Democrats in. The Green Party polled 9.11 per cent and received no seats; other parties, including independents, garnered just over 3.5 per cent of the vote.

This time around, we’ve got 85 seats, and Campbell’s Liberals have lost some clout — but only a little. With what appears to be 47 seats to 38 for the NDP, little has changed. And the Greens, with 8.14 per cent of the vote, are still out in the cold. There’s still a chance that we’ll get an independent in Delta South, where independent Vicki Huntington was running neck-and-neck with Liberal Attorney General Wally Oppal late last night. But that hardly has the power to change the balance of power.

Locally, it’s more of the same as well. Obviously, voters in what’s now called West Vancouver-Sea to Sky have been generally pleased with the way Joan McIntyre has represented them for the past four years. However, even with McIntyre having garnered almost 55 per cent of the vote this time around, there’s a sense in the riding that more will be expected of her in the future; her constituents who disagree with her on certain issues — especially independent power and the environment — don’t feel their voices are being heard. What’s more, with our elected representative now a junior member of cabinet, she can no longer afford to sit on the back bench and take orders; she needs to be more assertive, both inside and outside caucus.

And what of the vote on B.C.’s proposed single transferable vote (STV) voting system? After it nearly achieved the needed 60 per cent in 2005, the conventional wisdom going into the campaign was that more people who learned about how it works would throw their support behind it. The first cracks began to appear a few weeks ago, though, when polling started to show that it might not even achieve a simple majority.

So much for conventional wisdom. STV received less than 40 per cent, and our guess is that it’ll be a very long time before British Columbians have another chance at real voting reform. For all its foibles (including the results of the 1996 and 2001 elections), first past the post appears to be here to stay.

Looking at the big picture, our guess is that most British Columbians generally felt the Campbell Liberals had done a competent job of managing the public purse. During a recession, that’s nearly always the top priority. For better or worse, Campbell managed to paint the NDP and Carole James as a party who would take the province back into long-term deficit spending.

Campbell and his caucus can’t afford to rest on their laurels, though. British Columbians are now more aware than ever of the issues surrounding run-of-river power and the privatization of B.C. Hydro; the government’s position on those two issues requires a re-think.

As well, as the economic recovery takes hold, B.C. needs to reinvest in public education and child care, which have suffered from cutbacks and inaction under the Liberals. The NDP under James may not have won the election, but they did well enough to make things interesting for the government over the coming months and years. From where we stand today, it would only take four or five by-elections in key ridings to completely shift the balance of power.