It's always challenging filing a column on the eve of an election, since by the time most people read it, they know the election's outcome.
So predictions can be a precarious proposition. However, I will offer one prediction: this election will go down as one the most pivotal ones in B.C. history.
The NDP, according to reputable pollsters such as Ipsos Reid and Angus Reid, had a strong lead in public support heading into the campaign's final days.
The prospect of an election win looked to be the best in more than 20 years.
If the NDP can't win under the circumstances - facing an unpopular leader of an unpopular government, and leading in the polls for so long - the question of whether the party can ever win will come up, and I'm not sure what the answer will be for many people.
The B.C. Liberals face possible extinction if they can't pull off a miracle win, or at the very least win enough seats to form a credible Opposition.
We've seen the so-called "free-enterprise coalition" fall apart and disappear before (see: Social Credit party).
This brings us to the two leaders.
If the NDP loses, Dix will undoubtedly face many critics within his own ranks. The NDP is very good at taking down its leaders at the slightest sign of weakness (see: Mike Harcourt, Glen Clark and Carole James), and Dix may well face a revolt of some kind.
However, it may be Christy Clark who faces the sharpest knives. If she wins, then those knives will of course be sheathed, at least for a while.
This election will also be studied by political scientists for other reasons, notably the contrasting styles the two parties took through the campaign.
The B.C. Liberals ran an angry, relentlessly negative campaign that routinely issued false and misleading statements about all kinds of things.
Clark was called on this by the media - national columnists such as Gary Mason from the Globe and Mail and Brian Hutchinson from the National Post wrote scathing columns, and Global B.C. and other news outlets conducted "reality checks" that questioned the B.C. Liberal claims.
Yet, for all the criticism, the B.C. Liberals actually went up in public support (according to the polls) using this approach.
The NDP ran a costly positive campaign that stressed their platform, and only at the end did the party switch gears and hurl grenades at the B.C. Liberal track record.
At no time, however, did the party engage in the kind of personal attacks that were routinely part of the other camp's strategy.
But the NDP lost ground during the campaign, according to those polls. A once insurmountable lead shrunk to single digits.
Does that suggest people aren't inspired by the positive approach and are lured by the negative?
Whatever the outcome, it's bound to have an impact far greater and farther reaching than the last two elections and many more before them.
Keith Baldrey is the chief political reporter for Global B.C. To contact him, send an email to Keith.Baldrey@ globalnews.ca.
