ElectionsBC finished counting all the ballots from the October election over the weekend, and one of the Kamloops ridings came down to the wire.

A strong showing in the mail-in vote for the NDP’s Sadie Hunter pulled her to within 200 votes of Liberal incumbent for Kamloops-North Thompson, Peter Milobar, ultimately falling short in her quest to claim the seat by 196 votes.

Milobar had a lead of 791 votes before mail-in ballots started being counted. He finished with 40.99 percent of the vote, compared to Hunter’s 40.13 per cent.

For Milobar, a former Kamloops mayor, councillor and chair of the Thompson-Nicola Regional District, this will be his second term as MLA.

It was also close in Fraser-Nicola riding, with Liberal incumbent Jackie Tegart getting past the NDP’s Aaron Sumexheltza by 282 votes. Tegart held a lead of 385 votes before mail-in ballots started being counted.

Of note, former VP of the NDP executive in the riding, Dennis Adamson, claimed 438 votes running as an independent, doing so after resigning from the executive following the party’s appointment of Sumexheltza as their candidate.

Liberal Todd Stone in Kamloops South, saw no appreciable change in his margin of victory after the mail-in ballots were counted. He earned 51.14 per cent of total votes in the riding, finishing 4,878 votes ahead of NDP candidate Anna Thomas.

In total, the NDP earned two more seats with mail-in ballots being counted and the Liberals and Greens each lost one.

That means the NDP will form a majority government with 57 seats in the BC Legislature; the Liberals will have 28 seats as the official opposition while the Greens will have two seats. It’s not clear if the Greens will be granted official party status in the Legislature.

The Liberals held onto most seats in the southern Interior they had before the election was called, but lost seats to the NDP in Boundary-Similkameen and in Vernon-Monashee.

– with files from Kirk Fraser