For most of British Columbia鈥檚 history, there have been two choices on the ballot.

Conservative or Liberal, Social Credit or NDP, or NDP or BC Liberal.

It looked for a while like this election was going to be different. Along with the Greens as a perennial small party option, there were three major choices 鈥� the re-branded BC Liberals in their BC United guise, the BC Conservatives, and the ruling NDP.

Then on Aug. 28, 24 hours after he鈥檇 been busy lambasting the Conservatives as a bunch of radical right-wingers too strange to be given office, United leader Kevin Falcon torpedoed his own party and threw his support behind them.

Nothing like this has ever happened in B.C. politics, and that鈥檚 saying something.

We鈥檝e seen parties suffer wipeouts 鈥� the Socreds in 1991, the NDP in 2001. Sometimes they recover, and sometimes they get smashed to bits and reconstituted into new parties.

Falcon apparently decided to speed up the process, rather than entrusting it to the voters.

It鈥檚 a shame, because we don鈥檛 know yet what most voters would have made of the policies of the BC Conservatives and their leader, John Rustad.

Rustad has argued for B.C. to build nuclear reactors for power, has talked about increasing privatization in health care, and has called for a sweeping review of books in B.C. schools to ensure their 鈥渘eutrality.鈥� 

So now we find out where people鈥檚 votes will land. The centre-right and centre-left in B.C. have always been big-tent parties. The NDP has had to accommodate unionized resource industry workers and environmentalists. The old Liberals had to balance between socially liberal pro-business folks and those with socially conservative viewpoints.

In general, the BC Conservatives represented the latter end of the spectrum, and it鈥檚 unclear whether taking on board a few United refugees will change the party鈥檚 policies.

So where does a middle-of-the-road B.C. voter go? Do they jump to the NDP 鈥� which under John Horgan blazed a trail to the centre 鈥� or to the Conservatives, now that United has been sunk?

Campaigns matter, as they say, and this one will matter more than most. The NDP at this point is a known quantity. The BC Conservatives, however, still have to introduce themselves thoroughly to the voters of this province.

鈥� M.C.