On going into the Non-Partisan Association’s election night party at the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver -- and as parties go, I’ve had more people in my bathroom -- I could not help but note that outside on the street, bordering either side of the hotel, were bike lanes.

Look out, reader, there’s a bad metaphor heading your way, and it would be:

The city’s new landscape was right there at curbside for the NPA and its supporters to read.

This, they either chose not to do, or if they did, they misread it completely. For this, they got to spend their election night staring into their drinks.

At the height of the NPA’s evening, which peaked as soon as the first polls came in, there might have been at most 200 to 300 people there. The crowd was largely white, mannerly and older. The mood was . . . what’s the opposite of electrifying? And that was before the results started to come in.

Down the street at the Wall Centre, Vision Vancouver was holding its election night party, and all one had to do was walk into that big ballroom to be struck by the difference between Vision and the NPA.

The room was packed. The crowd was remarkably diverse and mostly young. (Vision clearly held the lead in pork pie hats and skinny jeans.) Even before the first results came in, you could feel the energy in the room. It was an energy that felt positive, as if these people were for something rather than against it.

In a post-election interview that night, losing NPA mayoral candidate Kirk LaPointe made mention of Vision Vancouver’s campaign “machine,” and that Vision had done a better job of getting out its vote.

But that is missing the point, and deflecting what is the NPA’s biggest problem.

Vision does have a formidable campaign machine. But machines are only as good as the energy behind them.

More to the point was LaPointe’s concession speech, in which he characterized Mayor Gregor Robertson’s three-peat as “a signature accomplishment” and that his “commitment to his priorities (was) a real role model for how mayors should operate.”

Exactly. Robertson has been committed to his priorities. He may have alienated many voters over bike lanes and densification and his Green City agenda, but at least he had an agenda. He had a clear idea of what he wanted Vancouver to be, and that was to be not just a city but an expression of an idea. That idea was forward-looking, and meant to meet a future dominated by population growth and climate change. And that is why, I would suggest, that the crowd at the Vision party was so overwhelmingly young. They were the machine, because they had a big stake in the future, whereas the NPA looked mired in the past.

I had thought the race was going to be closer, and had even believed LaPointe had a good chance of squeaking in a win if COPE mayoral candidate Meena Wong could steal enough votes from Robertson to make a difference.