Nova Scotians began lining up early Tuesday under clear skies and mild temperatures -- and with polls suggesting the winds of change were also in the air -- to vote in a provincial election widely expected to have a historic outcome.
If the polls are right, the New Democrats will form a government for the first time in any province east of Ontario.
Dana Doiron, an official with Elections Nova Scotia, said voting was brisk on Tuesday with some eager electors lining up at polling stations before the doors opened at 8 a.m.
Doiron said the warm weather likely helped boost voter turnout.
After running a careful, middle-of-the-road campaign, the question for many is not whether NDP Leader Darrell Dexter is going to win a majority, but what size of majority.
However, after voting Tuesday in a Cole Harbour church hall, he emerged to say he was taking nothing for granted.
The party has traditionally had a hard time trying to expand its power base beyond Halifax. But many in the province have been hit hard by the economic slowdown and are fed up.
Dexter, a former lawyer and journalist, repeatedly assured voters that the party is fiscally responsible and promised his party would balance the province's books in 2010-2011, despite a massive $12-billion debt.
Liberal Leader Stephen McNeil voted in Granville Centre, accompanied by his wife Andrea and 19-year-old daughter Colleen.
McNeil made one last appeal Tuesday morning, asking Tory voters to support the Liberals in order to stop the NDP momentum, insisting that many ridings are still too close to call.
"There's no question there will be change today, it's just a question of what that change looks like," he said to reporters after casting his ballot.
"There are so many races that are really three-way races that are tight that no one will know. I don't think anyone can predict a good number of these ridings until, really, the votes are counted."
Premier Rodney MacDonald, who has been stalled in third place through most of the campaign, was scheduled to vote in his Cape Breton riding.
When MacDonald's Conservatives minority government fell over a confidence vote after three years in power, there were 21 Tory seats in the 52-seat legislature, followed closely behind by the NDP's 20. There were also nine Liberals, one Independent and one vacancy.
Unlike the NDP's sudden vault to power in Ontario almost 20 years ago, in Nova Scotia it's been a decades-long slow and steady climb for the left-leaning party. It's one that really got going back in the early 1980s, when a then-relatively unknown Alexa McDonough became provincial party leader. Some believe that her high-profile victory sowed the seeds of what could become the first ever NDP government east of Ontario.
Many criticized MacDonald during the race for his negative campaign ads and his attack on Dexter during a televised leaders' debate, when he likened the young leader to a car thief.
MacDonald, campaigning in the tiny village of Iona Monday, admitted the campaign got rough.
"From time to time in a campaign, like the playoffs, sticks get up a little bit higher than expected sometimes. But we're all here for the best for our province, and I respect that," he told reporters.
