B.C.’s provincial election is in the rear view mirror.
It was a tight race that went late into the night with the final numbers showing the Liberals will be forming the next government with 43 seats with Leader Christy Clark winning her seat in Kelowna West.
The NDP will be the opposition once again with 41 seats with Leader John Horgan winning his seat.
The B.C. Greens took 3 seats, all on the Island. The Greens Andrew Weaver has been elected and will have company.  Greens Saanich North and the Islands candidate Adam Olsen and Cowichan Valley’s Sonia Furstenau will head to Victoria with him.
More seats went to indigenous candidates than ever before.
Liberal cabinet ministers who are back in include Mike de Jong, Mike Bernier, Shirley Bond, Norm Letnick, Mike Morris, Teresa Wat, Andrew Wilkinson, Mary Polak, Stephanie Cadieux and John Yap.
Peter Fassbender, Amrik Virk and Suzanne Anton has lost their seats to the NDP.
The people of the Cowichan Valley have spoken.
Green Party Candidate Sonia Furstenau took the lead in a tight race to become the next MLA of the Cowichan Valley. Preliminary results show she received 37 percent of the vote share.
Furstenau says the support she has received so far has been tremendous.
NDP Lori Iannidinardo was a close second with 32-percent of the votes. Steve Housser ended the night with 27 percent.
This riding has gone to the NDP in 12 out of the last 15 elections.
In Nanaimo-North Cowichan incumbant NDP Doug Routley has been declared elected with 47 per cent of the vote.
Routley says there were highs and surprising lows for the party in this election.
Routley will be serving his 4th term.
Nanaimo’s NDP incumbent Leonard Krog will be going back to Victoria to represent his riding.
Krog says he was sorry to see Gary Holman lose his Saanich seat but people appeared to vote for change overall and he is wondering which way the Green’s will go in the Legislature….
Krog says, as far as his win goes, he is grateful to his team and is looking forward to representing his constituents for another 4 years.
In Parksville-Qualicum Liberal incumbent Michelle Stilwell is back.
We spoke with her briefly Wednesday night and she was happy with the win although said it was unfortunate Peter Fassbender and Suzanne Anton lost their seats.
But the celebrations were muted somewhat when Stilwell told her supporters she has been having ongoing problems related to her spinal cord injury for the past 4 weeks.
She says she will be checking into the hospital this Friday for surgery.
The tightest race of the night may have been in Courtenay-Comox where the top two candidates finished 9 votes apart.
Jim Benninger of the Liberals finished with 10,049 votes to the NDP’s Ronna Rae-Leonard’s 10,058.
