Christy Clark declares victory in B.C., but trails the NDP’s David Eby in her own riding

British Colum­bia Pre­mier Christy Clark, whose B.C. Lib­er­als scored a huge upset over the New Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, has just fin­ished deliv­er­ing her vic­to­ry speech in down­town Van­cou­ver in front of hun­dreds of cheer­ing supporters.

Smil­ing broad­ly, Clark declared that her par­ty had won a clear man­date to gov­ern and would move for­ward with its plans to help oil com­pa­nies drill more wells and build more pipelines to increase the province’s fos­sil fuel exports.

Less than an hour and a half ear­li­er, the NDP’s Adri­an Dix con­ced­ed defeat in front of a sub­dued crowd of activists who had hoped to be cel­e­brat­ing the end of Lib­er­al rule but instead found them­selves shell­shocked at the mar­gin of their defeat.

“Some­times you win, and some­times you lose, and in British Colum­bia it often rains,” Dix told sup­port­ers as he acknowl­edged the defeat with dignity.

“Tonight, we are dis­ap­point­ed, but we are unbowed,” he added.

“We’ve elect­ed a very strong team that is going to hold the Gov­ern­ment account­able… This par­ty’s deter­mi­na­tion to bring change will continue.”

Per­haps, but the NDP is now in a much weak­er posi­tion than it was before the elec­tion. That’s not the result Dix want­ed, hoped for, or expected.

Dix him­self will return to Vic­to­ria as the MLA for Van­cou­ver — Kingsway. But he will return with less clout and less cred­i­bil­i­ty than he had when he left to cam­paign as the pub­lic face of the New Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party.

And whether he will remain the par­ty’s leader is an open ques­tion. The NDP per­formed worse with him at the helm than it did with Car­ole James in 2009. (James, inci­den­tal­ly, won reelec­tion in her own rid­ing and will also return to Victoria).

Speak­ing with reporters after her vic­to­ry speech, Clark lav­ished praise on her par­ty’s vol­un­teers and basked in the glow of victory.

“Oh my gosh, you guys, I’m feel­ing real­ly hon­ored,” she exclaimed when asked about her reac­tion to the unex­pect­ed­ly great results for her party.

Nat­u­ral­ly, she was also asked about the polls.

“If there’s any les­son in this, it’s that poll­sters and prog­nos­ti­ca­tors do not choose the gov­ern­ment,” she replied.

That’s cer­tain­ly true: we at NPI are fond of say­ing that the only real poll hap­pens on Elec­tion Day (south of the bor­der, here in Wash­ing­ton and Ore­gon, it’s more like Elec­tion Month, but the same prin­ci­ple applies).

How­ev­er, it appears that the vot­ers in Clark’s own rid­ing are on the verge of choos­ing some­one else to rep­re­sent them in Vic­to­ria. The NDP may well come out of this elec­tion with at least the sat­is­fac­tion of hav­ing knocked out Clark in Van­cou­ver — Point Grey with a stel­lar can­di­date, David Eby, who used to serve as exec­u­tive direc­tor of the B.C . Civ­il Lib­er­ties Association.

(I pro­filed Eby on Sat­ur­day and came away very impressed).

Eby, who has trad­ed the lead with Clark a cou­ple of times dur­ing the course of the night, is present­ly ahead by sev­er­al hun­dred votes, which is rather remark­able. With one hun­dred and sev­en­ty-three of one hun­dred and sev­en­ty-three bal­lot box­es report­ed, Eby has a three hun­dred and six­ty vote lead over Clark.

Advance polls (ear­ly votes, as we’d say in the U.S.) still need to be count­ed, but the NDP made a big effort to get British Columbians to vote ear­ly, and it seems unlike­ly that the advance polls will favor Clark.

If Eby ekes out a vic­to­ry, it will be bit­ter­sweet for him, but very sat­is­fy­ing for the NDP… a bright spot on an oth­er­wise very grim elec­toral map.

Clark would then find her­self in the embar­rass­ing posi­tion of hav­ing to ask one of her own vic­to­ri­ous Lib­er­al can­di­dates to step aside so she can hold a seat in the B.C. Leg­isla­tive Assem­bly. (As I’ve pre­vi­ous­ly not­ed, in British Colum­bia, an MLA does not have to reside in the rid­ing that he or she represents).

As of 11:40 PM, these were the results in Van­cou­ver — Point Grey:

Despite hav­ing undoubt­ed­ly lost some pro­gres­sive vot­ers to Françoise Raunet of the Green Par­ty, Eby is still ahead, and leads by a slight­ly more com­fort­able mar­gin at present than he did ear­li­er. It’s look­ing pret­ty good for him.