Christy Clark will be the new premier of B.C. -- but if the leadership race had been held as a traditional convention, she may very well not have won.

Pollster Mario Canseco with Angus Reid says had the rules of transferring second choices been different, the province may well have chosen Kevin Falcon as the new premier.

"With a different race there could have been a very different result," said Canseco.

In a traditional convention, losing candidates often throw their all support behind main challengers for the next round of voting.

But the Liberals used a preferential ballot system, so it was the voters who decided who their second choice would be individually.

That meant that only some proportion -- and not all -- of a candidate's support went to the candidate's preferred second choice.

In this election, both Kevin Falcon and George Abbott said their clear second choice was each other.

When Abbott was eliminated in the second round of counting, he had 2361 weighted votes that needed to be reassigned.

Christy Clark led with 3575 weighted votes compared to Kevin Falcon's 2564 weighted votes -- but with a boost from Abbott's camp, either could have hopped over 50 per cent to win.

Even though Abbott voters knew Abbott's second choice preference, only 64 per cent of them chose Falcon. The rest, about 36 per cent or 845 weighted votes, went with Christy Clark.

Those 845 weighted votes put Clark over the top.

"In the end it was closer than a lot of people thought," said Canseco. "Falcon got a lot of votes but not enough to defeat her in the final round."

If the election had been held as a first-past-the-post system, where the person with the most votes wins, Christy Clark would have handily taken the prize.

Her first ballot results had her with 3209 weighted votes compared to Falcon at 2411, Abbott at 2091, and Mike De Jong at 789.

She also was a clear favourite across most of the province, coming in on average first in Metro Vancouver, in Victoria, on Vancouver Island, and in B.C.'s north.

George Abbott had a strong regional base in the Southern Interior, taking Kelowna handily and winning his own riding of Shuswap by 92 per cent.

But that support didn't extend to any other region. When he was eliminated from the race, roughly 2/3 of his votes went to Kevin Falcon.

Falcon was a strong second across the province, with only a slight lead in the group of ridings south of the Fraser River. With Abbott's second choice ballots, he overtook Christy Clark very slightly in the province's north, and in the Southern Interior.

Clark led in ridings held by the NDP throughout the race, and in the first round won Liberal-held ridings with 34 per cent of the weighted votes compared to Falcon's 31 per cent of the weighted votes.

However by the third count, Falcon had leap-frogged Clark in Liberal-held ridings to lead 52 per cent to 48 per cent.

This could have repercussions if Liberal supporters that elected Liberal MLAs don't warm to Clark as leader, said Canseco, who warned of possible defections to the B.C. Conservative party.

"She needs to rebuild the Liberal brand as we move to the next election," said Canseco.

With a report from CTV British Columbia's Jon Woodward