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OTTAWA – The other day, one of Peter MacKay’s crusade staff members drove more than an hour outside Montreal to collect a bachelor poll for the conservative leadership race.
A volunteer on the Crusade of Ontario MEP Erin O’Toole jumped on her with her service dog to spend hours on the roads of southwest Ontario picking up the ballots for him.
For the 4 leading candidates, which ends on Sunday, each and every election counts, however, where they come from can set the level for the coming months.
The effects will be disclosed across the province, describing in real time the lack of applicants in each region of Canada, as well as their prospects in a federal election.
After the 2019 elections, where Western alienation was a major issue, and in a race where none of the 4 applicants are from the West, all eyes will be on the numbers of the units. Conservatives, and potentially their rivals, will ask: Does the winner have bases in Alberta? What about any momentum in Quebec?
Regional divisions may not be the only ones exposed.
The party’s preferential voting means that selecting a voter’s moment can be as important, if not more, than the first. This is a driving force for many applicants in this competition, which came up after Andrew Scheer announced his intention to resign.
Supporters of Ontario MP Derek Sloan, who works with well-connected social conservative groups, spoke openly, for example, of writing down only two names: he and Leslyn Lewis, who also has a strong social conservative opinion.
If Sloan finishes fourth in the first counting round, his call drops and the possible moment options of his followers are counted. If all those votes pass to Lewis, however, is eliminated in the next circular, his leadership says it ends there.
Brad Trost, who finished fourth in the 2017 race thanks to social-conservative support, suggested this summer that they should not take that path.
“If there is no hope that he will vote for a candidate, there is very little hope that a candidate will show up for his or her vote, and the problems that interest him are more likely to be overlooked,” he wrote in an editorial.
For Lewis supporters, the calculation is different.
Toronto’s lawyer is a social conservative, but she has noticed growing beyond that base, not because of her social conservative policies, but for other facts: she is a black woman from Toronto, and her pedigree can be a formidable challenge to the declared feminist. credibility of Trudeau’s liberals.
The candidate his supporters mark with the number 2 on their ballots may be the winner, if not win categorically.
That is why O’Toole’s crusade, which is positioning itself more to the right of the political spectrum, has well condemned his crusade in recent weeks with little praise, highlighting his achievements, but suggesting it to his others.
In a cross-mail in mid-August, MP Garnett Genuis said that while Lewis called her, she was too much a political recruit. She’s never held office. The party will have to be able to get to work, he said.
“That’s why I’m going to classify Erin O’Toole as number one and Leslyn Lewis as number two,” he wrote.
MacKay, a former closet minister who returned to politics, is the only one among the triumvirate of his opponents, as he openly fought his crusade for votes over the progressive aspect of the party, so-called disused liberals, and red conservatives who once flocked to one of his prominent top supporters: progressive former prime minister Brian Mulroney.
It was Mulroney who, before Stephen Harper, managed to form a coalition of conservatives to shape the government, was in the wake of Mulroney that the motion for redevelopment would emerge in Alberta and eventually cannibalize the PCs, led by MacKay at the time.
The way the group chooses a leader also goes back to the days of the PC, when MacKay’s leader. When the party merged with the Canadian Alliance, one condition was that everyone involved had a voice in the leader’s selection.
Each race is awarded a hundred numbers and the winner decides who gets the maximum numbers.
The number of memberships sold according to the crusade is not as large as the place where they were sold to arrive with just under 270,000 people eligible to vote.
Alberta is estimated to have about 61,000 members, but there are only 34 seats and 3,400 points. Quebec is estimated to have very few members, about 12,000 more people, but 78 seats, or 7,800 points.
Did MacKay’s team drive an hour to pick up? That can make all the difference.
There are divisions that the new leader will have to deal with, observers say.
The feathers are still fussing in some circles through an effort to drive Sloan out of the caucus because of his comments on the Director of Public Health. O’Toole’s repeated attacks on MacKay have also left many other people in their mouths with a bad taste in their mouths.
Most members say they will join the new leader in the caucus room.
“An acceptance speech must be delivered that must succeed in defeated postulants and the many factions or sections of the party,” conservative stratster Bruce Carson recently wrote.
“As MacKay knows, and O’Toole too, you can never take the team spirit and unity of the match for granted. We hope that there will be constant and continuous attention and support.”
If the base still doesn’t feel relieved on Sunday, someone else may already be waiting for the scenes.
On Monday, conservative modeling leadership candidate Maxime Bernier, who finished the moment in 2017 and resigned to shape his own dissident party, is ready to face them at a planned press conference.
This report from The Canadian Press was first published on August 21, 2020.
Stephanie Levitz, Canadian Press