It was nearing midnight Monday, and with a race too close to call in Burnaby South, supporters at Kennedy Stewart’s campaign office were given some incentive to stick it out a little longer.
They were offered a round of drinks on the house.
While the announcement elicited cheers, there was a much bigger applause in the room about half an hour later when the NDP candidate claimed victory.
Stewart was re-elected for a second term after narrowly defeating his closest challenger, Liberal Adam Pankratz, by only a few hundred votes.
When the dust settled, the NDP incumbent held on for the win, picking up 16,094 votes compared to 15,547 for the Liberal.
The margin of victory for Stewart was just 1.2 per cent.
"It's always close," Stewart said, noting it was a similar situation when he was elected for the first time in 2011 in Burnaby Douglas.
When asked what put him over the top, he credited the people who worked on his campaign.
“When you lose… it’s because of you, but when you win it’s because of your team,” he said.
While Stewart held on, the national results were a near disaster for the NDP.
The party won just 44 seats in Ottawa.
“Canadians clearly wanted change, and they got it, and that’s what happened. We [the NDP] just didn't happen to be that change," he said.
Stewart said there is a lot the NDP can “work with” with the Liberal party platform, but suggested there were problems with it, too, and his party will be holding the new government to account.
“I’m sure the Conservatives will be in complete disarray, so it will be up to us to be a force there in Ottawa,” he said.
Just a five-minute drive away at his campaign office on Kingsway, Pankratz was reflecting on the close loss. He was thrilled with the results of the party nationally, suggesting people responded to the positive message and campaign. Pankratz said he was also proud of his own effort locally.
“We did incredibly well. Nobody gave us a chance in the riding and we showed we definitely could have won,” he said, also crediting the NDP for running a good campaign.
Even though the early results from Monday night had the Liberal in the lead with a few hundred votes, he said he never thought he had a win in the bag.
As for his future, the 32-year-old isn’t ruling out the possibility of staying in politics.
“For me it’s been a great experience. When or what the future holds, I don’t know,” Pankratz said.
It was a similar sentiment from Conservative candidate Grace Seear, who finished third with 12,441 votes, or 27 per cent.
The Conservative-staffer-turned-candidate said she was surprised by the national results, adding she feels sad about outgoing Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s own fortunes on election night more so than her own.
Seear also congratulated Stewart on his victory and thanked her own team for their work on the campaign.
“I hope they understand it’s not their defeat,” she said, adding she has time to consider her own political future.
Seear said when she was door knocking earlier in the campaign, she didn’t get a sense the Liberals would provide as much competition.
“I think they [voters] were looking for change,” she said.
Rounding out the election results were the Green’s Wyatt Tessari, who received 1,306 votes, and the Libertarian candidate Liz Jaluague, who netted 498 votes.
As for voter turnout in the realigned Burnaby South riding, a total of 45,886 people voted out of the 75,263 registered electors.
That was good for a 61 per cent voter turnout, but below the national average of 68.5 per cent.
