SDLP's future/ analysis: To borrow a phrase used by republicans, the SDLP may well need to go into "a new mode" after this election.
Having avoided meltdown, despite being written off for the best part of the last 20 years, the party has shown its dogged qualities.
It went into the election with three MPs, two of them retiring, and emerged with three. In doing so the party has confounded many pundits as well as a few bookies.
Written off by some since Sinn Féin took to the hustings after the electoral success of H-block candidates in 1981, the party has refused to roll over.
Perhaps this should not cause much surprise. Has there not been an enduring element within nationalist Ireland that cannot lend support to any group aligned with violence? In keeping with that, there are voters who cannot go along with Sinn Féin for the single reason that they cannot forgive the IRA - even if it leaves the stage.
The SDLP will trumpet this election and claim it showed it was possible, despite the nay-sayers, to replace John Hume and Seamus Mallon.
With strong showings in Foyle and South Belfast, the party has replaced its outgoing leader and deputy leader with the successors and sent the two of them to the Commons.
The party has held on to Hume's seat, a critical result. The loss of Derry, birthplace of the civil rights campaign, would have been a fatal blow not just to Mark Durkan's career but to any realistic hope that the party could hang on in the hope of better things to come.
Alasdair McDonnell's success in South Belfast, by breaking through the gap created by a hopelessly split unionist vote, will give the party much-needed heart, and remind many nationalist voters of the days when SDLP candidates snatched seats from unionists in South Down and Newry and Armagh.
Eddie McGrady's retention of South Down also showed that when put to the test the SDLP can still deliver.
However, perhaps these good results represent a problem postponed rather than solved?
McGrady, strongly personally motivated to prevent another Sinn Féin gain, will be unlikely to defend his constituency next time when he may be in his mid-70s.
His decision to fight this election when many others would have retired says much about the problems of succession for the SDLP in that constituency. The party locally has already lost an Assembly seat since McGrady retired from Stormont.
In South Belfast, McDonnell could be a one-term MP if unionist solidity is restored in 2008 or 2009.
Durkan, now established on Hume's throne as SDLP leader and representative for Foyle, is the sole secure Westminster MP for the party.
Or is he? Who knows how South Belfast nationalists will react to the surprise McDonnell victory, or how they would be motivated to vote given a single unionist candidate at the next general election.
The mood among SDLP insiders yesterday did not reflect the sense of surprise or relief many commentators expected them to have. The party was always confident of its abilities, and never truly signed up to the darkest predictions that it would take only one Westminster seat.