Today, the old clichs apply. The only voice that matters today is yours at the ballot box.
Tonight, all of the politicians, win or lose, will thank their supporters and agree that the voters have spoken.
But that's not the only thing to watch out for tonight after 8 p.m., when the polls close and the results roll in.
First, here's what won't be seen.
Unlike 2013, there will be no stunned pundits and shocked pollsters asked to explain how they could have got it so wrong. All of the experts hedged their bets this time around, which was a more responsible way to cover the campaign but a whole lot more boring, too.
Last time around, the pollsters were as much the story on election night as Christy Clark's unexpected win. Tonight, regardless of the outcome, the talking heads will be able to offer reasonable explanations of why it happened and also make it sound like they saw it coming all along.
The broadcasters are Vancouver-based, so they will focus their attention on ridings in the Lower Mainland, then Vancouver Island, then the rest of the province. That means it will be frustrating at times to watch the live returns on TV, awaiting for a voice to talk about Prince George and the Central Interior.
Prince George, in particular, is known as a bellwether city during provincial elections, filled with fickle voters that only back candidates for the winning party. Yet, as the Vancouver-centric televised leaders debate showed, issues of importance to voters in the Lower Mainland are increasingly different from what matters to voters in Prince George and area. It's not if but when Prince George voters decide one or both of its MLAs will sit in opposition, trying to represent their constituents from the other side of the legislature.
Keep an eye on that possibility tonight.
Viewers should also watch the popular vote numbers. If the NDP remain around their traditional 35-40 per cent of support, it means their regular supporters turned out but the casual voters stuck with the Liberals.
Jeffrey Simpson was one of the few newspaper columnists to get it right in 2013. Writing from Toronto, the Globe's longtime national affairs columnist, now retired, said that "the 10-second Socred" would come through for the Liberals. That's the group of people who ignore politics for four years, aren't huge fans of the Liberals but will show up at the polling station to make sure the NDP doesn't get in.
The NDP need to be in the 43-45 per cent range of the provincial vote to win. Even before seats are declared, whoever is polling in the low to mid-forties across B.C. is in the driver's seat and whoever is trending in the mid-to-high thirties will likely be spending the next four years in opposition.
Same goes locally.
Both Mike Morris and Shirley Bond won their ridings in 2013 with roughly 55 per cent support. Those early returns need to be in the high thirties or low forties for either of these Liberals to lose their grasp in Prince George and area.
The talking heads will focus on Metro Vancouver because the best chance for the NDP is to turn some of those red ridings orange tonight and the best chance for the Liberals is to hold onto those close ridings they won in 2013.
Yet the Southern Interior could also play a factor. The NDP were shutout in the Interior in all but three ridings last time around, clumped together in the Kootenays. If the electoral map is showing orange around Quesnel, Kamloops, Merritt and Penticton by 9 p.m., the Liberals could be in trouble.
By the same token, if Vancouver Island is any other colour but orange by that time, both the Liberals and the NDP will stay in the same seats in the next legislature.
Whatever happens tonight will happen because you and other residents like you around the province joined together in picking the next government.
The winning party and candidates, both locally or provincially, might not be who you voted for but it's their job to represent you nonetheless and it's your - and our - job to remind them of that for the next four years.
-- Managing editor Neil Godbout
