For some, the 2 votes made a huge political difference — Jean Chrétien even spoke of it on CTV following the results. Ironically, the Globe and Mail reported that six Kennedy ex-officio voters parked their first ballot with Martha Hall Findlay in sympathy; had this not happened, Kennedy would have been third and had the momentum.

All of this would be moot had Kennedy pulled ahead of Dion on the 2nd ballot — then it might have been Dion who would have moved to Kennedy and the race would have taken on a different shape.

The numbers, however, revealed that the pivotal move occurred on Saturday morning, when Findlay threw her support to Stéphane Dion instead of Bob Rae, who was also courting her. This widened the gap between Dion and Kennedy to over 100 votes and consequently forced the latter to throw his support to the former.

To Kennedy's credit, his decision not to wait for another ballot to make the move, left Rae and Ignatieff little time to counter.