This year's returns even managed to flout the academics' definition of an election as a mechanism for institutionalized conflict and change--though the ballots aren't all counted yet, it looks as though the new Cambridge City Council will be very much like the old one.

Most observers are predicting that the conservative Independents will keep five seats and the liberals four. The only incumbent on the borderline of re-election is David A. Wylie, who might be replaced by fellow liberal David Clem.

Depending upon how the votes are redistributed over the weekend under the city's complex system of proportional voting, there is an outside chance that the liberals could drop down to three seats or pick up a fifth one.

But if everything turns out as expected, there will be little change in city government. Several councilors and political observers said yesterday that Independents Leonard J. Russell and Walter J. Sullivan will remain in the liberal coalition that appointed James L. Sullivan city manager two years ago.

"They (Sullivan and Russell) don't want to be involved with Tom Danehy," Councilor Francis H. Duehay '55 said yesterday. "They'll never forget the day that Danehy was in control."

One source said that Russell has a good chance of being elected the next mayor, who is chosen by a majority vote of the council in January.

Community relations with Harvard are also intimately linked to the council's choice of mayor. The office of community and government affairs has had few problems working with Walter J. Sullivan, a source said, but if either Wylie or Alfred E. Vellucci were appointed to the post, relations would probably deteriorate.

Russell is viewed as better than any of the extremists, but "really slow" and possibly more difficult to deal with than Sullivan.

The single most important issue to Cambridge residents--rent control--will remain in the same precarious position, hanging on by one vote.

The only new element in this year's campaign was the formation of Cambridge Convention '75, a coalition of liberal groups in the city. The group threatened to undermine the Independents' control by registering thousands of newly enfranchised voters, but the plan failed when the convention didn't accompany the effort with enough follow-up. Students who had little commitment to Cambridge or the few scattered issues in the campaign just didn't show up at the polls.

A preliminary count of the Cambridge School Committee vote indicates that there too the liberals may have lost their majority to the Independents. The publicity surrounding the resignation of schools superintendent Alflorence Cheatham and the generally strong Independent turn-out may have cost the liberals votes in this race.