After a drawn-out recount in Terra Nova-The Peninsulas, the federal Conservatives now have three parliamentary seats in Newfoundland and Labrador for the first time in nearly 20 years. 

The previous trend toward Liberal voting in the province was, in part, a result of former premier Danny Williams and his "Anything But Conservative" campaign in 2008, where he encouraged residents not to vote blue in the federal election that year. 

Williams criticized former prime minister Stephen Harper's Conservatives for adjusting the federal equalization formula, effectively cutting payments to the province. 

Since then, the province has had mostly Liberal seats in parliament. That is until now.

Fabian Manning, a former senator and Conservative MP, held one of three Conservative seats in 2006, before the Williams ABC campaign. 

"We were dealing with, you know, a very, very toxic situation between the government of Newfoundland and Labrador and the government of Canada at the time," Manning said in an interview with CBC News on Tuesday. "Because of that, we had the ABC campaign."

He said that kind of idea doesn't go away overnight.

But almost 20 years later, residents came around to the idea of voting Conservative again.

Manning thinks many of the province's electors voted with their pocketbooks this year, and the party gained seats in turn.

"Time moves on and people … look for new direction," he said.

Acadia University political scientist Alex Marland says the result of this year's election is evidence of a rural-urban political divide in the province.

"People who are socially progressive and anchored in what I would call kind of urban values, are clustered mostly in the St. John's area and maybe to a broader extent the Avalon," he said.

Residents in rural areas, Marland continued, are more likely to be frustrated with the pace of change and will vote differently. 

Marland also says that Atlantic Canadians have "a lot of hesitations" about the kind of free market economics that is promoted by the Conservative Party of Canada.

"As a result, they … tend to lean a little bit more towards the Liberals because the Liberals believe in government intervention in the economy," he said.

Manning said residents in rural areas of the province are proud, and they have unique issues that other parties don't typically focus on, such as marine infrastructure and transportation.

"I think that's the reason, sometimes, why you see a vote like we'd seen in April," he said.

Marland added that social media could also be a reason for the change in voting behaviour. 

"Social media was not a huge thing back in 2006," he said. "[It] creates this stronger sense among people that they need to vote in a certain way."

However, residents in urban centres promote different concerns online than those in rural areas, he said, which creates a growing cultural divide and polarization. 

"A lot of the things that people in urban centres will be talking about, including in St. John's, will be completely disconnected from somebody worried about trying to get their wharf repaired in rural Newfoundland and Labrador," he said. 

MUN political scientist Kelly Blidook says the increase in Conservative seats won't make a huge difference in parliament, but it does make a difference for the province. 

"Now what we see, at least on the island, it's half and half," said Blidook. "I think this is actually kind of an interesting thing where Newfoundland and Labrador is now in a competitive state."

As for the upcoming provincial election, Blidook says it's possible there could be a similar dynamic rolling into provincial politics.

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Abby Cole is a journalist with CBC News in St. John's. She can be reached at [email protected].