The late night of nail biting and pacing that was to be in the cards for the front-runners in Nanaimo’s election race never materialized Tuesday as incumbent NDP MLA Leonard Krog held onto his seat.

Krog, who cruised to victory in the riding in 2005, held his seat by pulling in 53 per cent of the vote.

With 92 of the 132 polls reporting in Nanaimo two and a half hours after polls closed, Krog had 6,819 votes allowing him to hold onto the seat over Liberal challenger Jeet Manhas who had 4,831, or 37 per cent of the vote.

“It’s extremely gratifying,” said Krog of the win during celebrations in Nanaimo.

Like the campaign itself, Manhas was off to a slow start but appeared to be creeping closer as the night progressed. Early polls reported Krog holding 64 per cent of the vote compared with Manhas’s 23 per cent. But while that margin narrowed over the hours, Manhas never caught up.

Krog, who campaigned heavily on the issue of homelessness, said his win in Nanaimo means the NDP’s message got through during the campaign.

“I think most British Columbians have a strong social conscience,” he said, noting those who voted NDP railed against the Liberal government’s refusal to raise the minimum wage and redistribute wealth while the province was doing well.

“And I think the sell-off of public resources also resonated with them, I heard that a lot,” he added. “The [Liberals] tried to make this about the economy and in a sense it back-fired on them.”

Krog and Manhas have campaigned on very different issues during the campaign. While Krog focused on homelessness and poverty, Manhas concentrated on the economy and job creation, believing homelessness was further down the list of priorities.

Krog said his goals for his next term in office will remain working on issues of homelessness as well as getting to the bottom of the sale of BC Rail.

The contest was supposed to be close with Krog expected to have to fight a little harder this time around because of the new dimensions of the riding.

The riding now runs along Highway 19 from Rutherford Road in the north to Nanaimo Lakes Road in the south. It lost its southern half to Nanaimo-North Cowichan and picked up a chunk of the former Nanaimo-Parksville riding which meant a larger focus on the city centre, which was expected to favour the Liberals’ Manhas — a former Nanaimo city councillor.

But it never happened. Indeed Krog looked to be well on his way to grabbing the same percentage of the vote he had in 2005.

Green party candidate Dirk Becker appeared to score points at all-candidates meetings during the campaign and might eat into Krog’s left-wing support. But Becker managed just 1,077 votes for 9.5 per cent of the vote while Linden Shaw of the Refederation Party, who ran in 2005, garnered only 158 votes, for 1.2 per cent of the vote.

aduffy@tc.canwest.com