NDP Leader Liz Hanson says she's ready to hold the government accountable to all Yukoners.

Although her party was not able to bump the Yukon Party from its third consecutive term, the tearful leader spoke of the six elected NDP MLAs as a "dynamic” and "diverse” team.

"Look at my caucus,” Hanson said to reporters after her speech Tuesday evening at the High Country Inn.

"What an intelligent group of people. The Yukon Party can expect us to have thorough, clear questions, and we'll be expecting thorough and clear answers.”

The New Democrats won 32. 6 per cent of the popular vote and jumped from one to six seats in the house.

Retired principal Jim Tredger defeated Eric Fairclough, the Liberal MLA who has represented Mayo-Tatchun for the NDP and then the Liberals for the last 15 years.

The NDP's Lois Moorcroft took the Copperbelt South seat from the Yukon Party's Valerie Boxall by just three votes (10 votes or fewer mean an automatic recount).

Meanwhile, "Landslide Liz” beat out Justice Minister Marian Horne by a whopping 323 votes, the largest margin in any riding.

Kevin Barr took Mount Lorne-Southern Lakes with 46.8 per cent of the votes, while Kate White defeated Samson Hartland with a comfortable margin.

Popular former city councillor Jan Stick won the Riverdale South riding, kicking the nine-year Yukon Party incumbent, Glenn Hart, out of his seat.

John Carney, Jean-Francois Des Lauriers, Jorn Meier, Louis R. Gagnon and Skeeter Miller-Wright had less to celebrate last night, all finishing at the back of the pack in their ridings.

The conference room was packed with NDP supporters after the polls closed. At one point, it got so crowded it became difficult to move at all.

Supporters milled around the 19 pieces of construction paper taped to the wall, waiting for individual poll results to be written in a black Jiffy marker.

The crowd watched CBC television and broke into loud whoops and cheers whenever an NDP candidate took a lead. A campaigner finally switched the TV off when Premier Darrell Pasloski was shown on screen beginning his victory speech.

One public servant, who asked not to be named, spoke on why he was at last night's NDP party. He said we are very lucky in this territory to have a leader who understands how government works.

"We very seldom have that,” he said.

The supporter said it "shames” him to explain to Outsiders that we have a political culture in the Yukon which resembles that of Kazakhstan.

"Its the cult of colonialism, the attempt to sell out Crown assets for personal gain,” he said. "I look forward to the time that we might have a government leader that would not phone up senior public servants and use the ‘F' word on telephone”

Robyn Steudel, the party's communications manager, said the party was excited and nervous going into the election.

"It's so hard to tell when there are such small margins all over the place," she said.

"We had a meeting (Tuesday) morning and we said it could be between third party and majority government. Anything could happen.”

As for the negative attention other parties have been giving the NDP, especially during the last week of he campaign, Steudel said it just made her party stronger.

When adversaries started attacking the party, she continued, it almost seemed like there was more credibility to the NDP's campaign because everyone was afraid the party would win.

"We were in a situation where throughout the whole campaign, we were just sticking to our message,” said Steudel. "We wanted to say what we wanted to say, and not be distracted by other parties.”

Perhaps the most tense moment of the night came when Stephen Dunbar-Edge, the NDP candidate in Mountainview, was tied with Pasloski at 329 votes with one poll to go.

"I gotta tell you, my heart is beating a bit,” he said after seeing the matching scores on the CBC.

"This is the first time I've even been in a room where there is election activity going on. So it's an amazing feeling.

It's an amazing feeling that the Yukon people have this voice.”

But Pasloski slid past Dunbar-Edge in the riding's last poll, winning by 104 votes and axing the opportunity for Yukon to see its first openly gay MLA.

Former Yukon Quest musher Frank Turner, who lost to Yukon Party incumbent Brad Cathers in Lake Laberge, said he had mixed emotions after seeing the results in his riding.

He hopes a Yukon Party government can focus on long-term goals and make good decisions with a common sense approach.

"I'm disappointed that I'm not going to be part of that, but that's the way it goes.”

Turner did, though, say participating in the electoral process was one of the most significant things he's done in his life.

"Just to be able to go into so many people's homes, listen to so many ideas, so many different hopes about the Yukon,” he said. "It's not normal. We live in our own little world, and what this does is open the world up.”

White entered the room holding a box of Kleenex. She had been up against the Yukon Party's Samson Hartland and Liberal candidate Cherish Clarke for the Takhini-Kopper King seat, and had the longest wait of any candidate to see her riding's results.

"I have no saliva,” White was heard saying throughout the night.

When her victory was announced, the 34-year-old hugged her crowd of supporters and asked what she was supposed to do next.

"Talk to the media,” whispered Moorcroft.

White said she wasn't sure if she could form words, but her saliva had returned. She admitted the long wait to see her riding's results were "terrible”, but seemed gung-ho to start her work as MLA.

"We're going to do an amazing job,” she finally said. "We're going to make sure that they don't get away with anything. We're not government right now, but we will be government.”

Stick had saliva, but no voice.

When asked how she was feeling after defeating Hart in Riverdale South, she pointed to her throat and mouthed, " I feel really good!”

Stick managed to squeak out that her missing voice came from an intense month of campaigning and a lack of sleep.

Hanson spoke to reporters after her speech, promising that she will start holding the government accountable to the housing crisis.

She wants an immediate solution for all people still living in tent city and to see the 10 empty Yukon Housing Corp. duplexes in her downtown riding filled.

"I want to see some action,” she said.

The Peel watershed, too, is an issue Hanson wants to see some direction in. First is to deal with Pasloski's campaign threat to the public that land use planning could bankrupt the territory.

Hanson said she was proud of the "clean” and "principled” campaign the NDP led.

She hopes the Yukon Party government doesn't lead in the same fashion it has for the past nine years.

"I'm hoping to God they're not going to take their lead on how the legislature runs from the old gang.”

A government is elected to represent all Yukoners, not just whatever party you're part of, she said.

Hanson invited her two daughters, Sara and Paula, and her husband, Doug on to the stage with her. She then invited all the new MLAs and losing candidates to join her.

She spoke of former MLAs Steve Cardiff and Todd Hardy, two people she said should be up on the stage, too. Cardiff died in a July traffic collision south of Whitehorse, while Hardy lost his fight to leukemia a year earlier.

"Over the next few weeks, my team and I will work to develop our shadow cabinet,” she said, getting back to business.

"Then we will get on with the job of holding the government to account and demanding the honest, transparent and responsible government that Yukoners want and deserve.”

And the crowd cheered, once again.