Gordon Campbell, elected premier of BC in 2001.

The New Democratic Party, which had been in power since 1991, managed to retain just two seats. Among the New Democrats going down to defeat was former premier Ujjal Dosanjh, who lost his Vancouver-Kensington riding to the Liberal candidate and immediately resigned as leader of the NDP.

Official party standings following the election are:

Liberal Party	77
New Democratic Party	2

This is the fewest number of seats ever won by the NDP or its predecessor, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation. For the Liberals, it is the first time the party has formed a government since 1941. Neither the BC Green Party, led by Adriane Carr, or Unity BC, led by Chris Delaney, was able to win a seat in the legislature.

The final popular vote tally in the election was:

Liberals	57.5%
New Democrats	21.6%
Green	12.4%
Unity	3.3%
Other	5.2%

The Liberals won the highest popular vote in BC history since the Coalition government took 61.4% of the vote in 1949.

There have been 27 provincial elections since 1903, the year that party politics was formally introduced to the legislature. The Conservative Party won 5 of the first 8 elections, but it splintered during the 1933 contest and did not form a government in BC again. The Liberal Party won 6 elections, up to and including its victory in 1941, but had not been successful again until the contest in 2001. During World War II, the Liberals and Conservatives formed a coalition government; it remained in power until 1952, when the Social Credit Party emerged from nowhere to win election. Social Credit, under its leader W.A.C. Bennett, formed the provincial government for the next 2 decades. In 1972 the New Democratic Party won its first election. It was unseated by Social Credit in 1975 and the Socreds remained in office through 3 more elections. The New Democrats managed to regain power in 1991 and formed the government until the election loss in May 2001.

British Columbia has had 32 premiers, some more memorable than others. The first, John Foster McCreight, was dull enough that hardly anyone recalls his name. The second, Amor de Cosmos, made up for that. Originally named Bill Smith, De Cosmos changed his name to "Lover of the Universe" while living in California during the gold rush. He then moved to BC and became a crusading, and eccentric, newspaper editor. As a politician he was one of the leaders of the movement to bring the province into confederation with Canada, although he later introduced a motion in the federal House of Commons calling for BC to secede. When Richard McBride became premier in 1903 he was, at age 32, the youngest premier in BC history, and also the first born in the province. W.A.C. Bennett was the longest-serving (20 years), and one half of the only father-son pair of premiers (his son Bill served as premier from 1975 to 1986). The other family to experience unusual political success were the Davie brothers: Alexander, who was premier from 1887 to his death in 1889, and Theodore, who occupied the office from 1892 to 1895. In the decade preceding the May 2001 election, 3 BC premiers were forced to resign from office because of scandal: Bill Vander Zalm in 1991, Mike Harcourt in 1996 and Glen Clark in 1999. (Biographies of all the premiers are included in the on-line edition of the Encyclopedia of British Columbia.)

A list of the results of all provincial elections since 1903 can be found under ELECTION RESULTS.

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