Election last night.

The same result -- 22 United Bermuda Party seats to the Progressive Labour Party's 18 -- with the outcome once again hinging on a Hamilton constituency, although it was West as opposed to East this time.

There was also a major upset in Warwick West -- 30-year incumbent Sir John Sharpe was unseated just as his running mate Mr. Quinton Edness was 13 years ago.

And the prevailing sentiment is precisely the same -- while the UBP may have won the election on paper, it was the PLP that scored the decisive moral victory.

Premier the Hon. Sir John Swan now finds himself in a similar position to the one faced by his predecessor Sir David Gibbons.

Unable to convince the electorate that a shopworn UBP deserved a broader mandate, Sir David soon stepped aside to allow the party to rebuild from the ground up. Presumably Sir John must now be giving serious thought to finding a successor and a new direction for the bloodied UBP.

Last night's results left in no doubt that both his party's credibility and its much ballyhooed "Blueprint for the Future'' are in tatters.

From one end of the island to the other, the message was the same.

Indeed, when all the post mortems are concluded, it may be that the PLP's generally low-key campaign was the only thing standing between it and victory.

The thousands of dollars the UBP threw at its flashy multi-media blitz was obviously money badly spent.

The heavy emphasis it placed on the UBP's ability to manage the economy carried nowhere near the weight with voters they were hoping for. And the PLP's ability to attract candidates of the calibre of Mr. Terry Lister and Miss Renee Webb belied the traditional UBP line that the Opposition is incapable of fielding competent business people.

And as former National Liberal Party candidate Mr. Walter Brangman observed: "This election is a wake-up call. There are no more safe seats.'' In St. George's North a combination of general neglect, a catastrophic on-again, off-again cruise ship policy and the personal popularity of PLP incumbent Miss Jennifer Smith proved to be an unbeatable combination for the Opposition.

Mr. Leon (Jimmy) Williams trounced UBP incumbent Philip Smith and his running mate Mr. E. Michael Jones in a constituency the governing party took for granted for more than 20 years.

The same thing almost happened in St. George's South, too, where UBP candidate Mrs. Grace Pitcher Bell only just squeaked to victory.

There the NLP's Miss Cheryl Pooley was the only thing standing between the PLP's Mr. Arthur Pitcher and victory. She was the only NLP candidate to act as a spoiler in this election.

Miss Pooley -- the one candidate to make women's issues the cornerstone of her campaign -- demonstrated there was a very receptive audience for her message.

She showed both the UBP and PLP had severely miscalculated by not making women's issues major campaign planks. With fully 36 percent of the electorate comprised of black females, this was an enormous and completely inexplicable blunder on both their parts.

The UBP paid lip-service to the issue last week when Deputy Premier Anne Cartwright DeCouto delivered a fire-and-brimstone speech on deadbeat dads; but that was largely dismissed for what it was -- last minute politicking. The fact the UBP had not sent a representative to a recent televised debate on the subject -- one Miss Pooley won hands-down -- was not lost on voters.

Then there was the issue that would not go away.

In Warwick East, the mishandled school reform plan came back to haunt former Education Minister Mr. Gerald Simons. His shuffle to the Environment Ministry earlier this summer proved to be far too little, way too late, opening the door to a PLP gain.

Race was ignored by the UBP but not by the PLP or voters. The Tumim Report put "institutional racism'' on the front burner -- an issue the PLP was much more comfortable dealing with, particularly since the Report indirectly placed responsibility for its continued existence on the UBP.

A last minute pledge by the Premier to remove the "glass ceiling'' for blacks struck a hollow chord with voters who wondered why the UBP hadn't got around to addressing the problem over its 25 years in power.

Both major parties succeeded in persuading voters there was no room for either Independents or third parties in the Bermudian political system. This probably worked more to the UBP's advantage, bringing back votes that went to Mr.

Stuart Hayward and the NLP's slate in 1989.

The NLP ran a nonexistent campaign in which it tried to push delayed Auditors Reports on Government finances as their major plank.

That proved to be a complete non-issue as far as voters were concerned, underscoring the NLP's irrelevance in the cut-and-thrust of the election battle.

And trying to challenge the leaders of the two major parties in their own backyards proved to be an equally serious miscalculation.

The NLP will now join the Bermuda Democratic Party in the political graveyard of tried-and-failed third parties.

Equally, the electorate's brief flirtation with Independents appears to have ended.

Mr. Stuart Hayward's success at the polls in 1989 may have actually worked against him in the long run.

Prior to his victory, the UBP had paid lip service at best to the environment.

But after Mr. Hayward's stunning upset of Deputy Premier Dr. Clarence James, they began to take an increasingly hard-nosed approach to the issue, quickly marginalising Mr. Hayward's Parliamentary role.

The UBP can take heart from the victories of Mr. Wayne Furbert and the Hon.

Maxwell Burgess, who topped the polls in Hamilton West.

The importance of these wins lies in the fact the UBP can still defeat popular and high profile PLP representatives through assiduous constituency work.

By the same token, the UBP's near disaster in St. George's stands as a clear example of where the party has failed to do its constituency work.

And given the final tallies in Pembroke West Central, Southampton West and both Warwick constituencies, all of these former UBP strongholds could easily be marginals at the next election unless the Furbert/Burgess examples are followed there.

They will make for exacting tests of the UBP's will to win.

OCTOBER 1993 ELECTION