Did B.C.'s memories of 1990s 'fudge-it-budget' hold key to NDP downfall?

Here's what it's like to live in British Columbia.

Your polls haven't even closed at 6:40 p.m. and Justin Trudeau has been declared the next prime minister. One hour later, with counting barely begun, network anchors have handed him a majority.

This was supposed to be the nail-biter in which B.C.'s 42 ridings decided the balance of power.

And seen a certain way, you could say the province put Trudeau past the 170 seats he needed to take control of Parliament. But it's unlikely any voters east of the Rockies waited for results from Burnaby South with bated breath.

We matter, we really do!

Still, we do matter. We must: all three parties campaigned hard in B.C. with Trudeau beginning and ending his campaign on the West Coast. He can legitimately claim to have deep roots here. Plus he did the Grouse Grind.

And viewed up close, it may also be possible to see B.C.'s fingerprints on crucial election decisions which ultimately saw the Liberals take the mantle of change from Tom Mulcair's NDP.

"Part of the way the NDP was pitching themselves may have been a response to attitudes about the NDP in B.C.," says UBC political scientist Gerald Baier.

It's hard to overstate just how difficult it would have been for the New Democrats to adopt an economic policy like Justin Trudeau's.

Short of changing their party's logo to a picture of Karl Marx, nothing would have played more into negative perceptions about the NDP in B.C. than promising to run a deficit.

The provincial New Democrats haven't been in power in B.C. since 2001, but the party is still haunted by the so-called "fudge-it-budget" of the 1990s, which saw balanced budgets revealed to be deficit-heavy.

Former B.C. premier Ujjal Dosanjh has run successfully for both the federal Liberals and the provincial NDP. He says the Liberals have the benefit of a past economic record the NDP can't claim.

"The NDP has had no federal experience. For them to be able to succeed, they believed it was important to say 'Let's have our focus on balanced budgets, otherwise we won't win'," he said. 

"They created a trap for themselves."

Big issues: bud and bitumen

Dosanjh calls the 2015 Liberal victory in B.C. "a redemption": a return from a humiliating two seats in 2011 to 17, most of which came at the expense of Conservatives.

The bulk of those victories came in the Lower Mainland, and while the biggest factor may have been the desire for change, two B.C. specific issues also likely played a role: marijuana and oil.

Marijuana dispensaries have proliferated around Vancouver in the past two years, and states south of the border have decriminalized the drug. Yet the Conservative government refused to consider anything but a hardline law-and-order approach.

The Leave It To Beaver approach put Stephen Harper at odds with Justin Trudeau in a region that's already living episodes of Weeds. 

Trudeau has promised to legalize and regulate pot. Meanwhile Vancouver city council moved to license dispensaries in the face of dire warnings from Ottawa. The sky has yet to fall. 

Likewise, the Conservatives all but ignored protests on the West Coast related to the proposed expansion of Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain pipeline and fears of an oil spill in Burrard Inlet.

Those concerns may have helped entrepreneur Terry Beech win the new riding of Burnaby North-Seymour for the Liberals. He promised to revise the National Energy Board and says his party will revisit an unpopular decision to shut down the Kitsilano Coast Guard station.

Reality versus ideology

With both marijuana and oil, Conservative ideology butted up against the realities going on in the lives of British Columbians.

Which made B.C. feel like a long way from Ottawa — and the distance between them a lot further than even time zones might suggest.

Former B.C. NDP MP Dawn Black points out that her party held its own on the West Coast with a total of 14 seats; that didn't happen in many other parts of the country. And Vancouver Island skewed almost completely orange.

At the end of the day though, Black says the election was clearly about change, and for most voters that was clearly embodied by Justin Trudeau.

Black says she feels Mulcair ran a principled, good campaign. But there was no avoiding the red wave.

"It's a difficult night for the New Democrats, but when the people speak, they speak with a voice we need to respect," Black said.