Conservatives in Battlefords-Lloydminster were among those responsible for helping Andrew Scheer get over the finish line in the party’s leadership race.
Scheer pulled off a narrow come-from-behind victory over Maxime Bernier in the leadership race that wrapped up this past weekend. The former House Speaker and longtime MP from Regina-Qu’Appelle won on the 13th ballot with 50.95 per cent of the electoral vote.
But while Scheer ran in second place through most of the counting Saturday, he led the entire way in the tally of votes from Battlefords-Lloydminster, according to numbers posted on the Conservative party website.
In the first ballot, Scheer received 44.92 percent of votes from the riding’s Conservative members, well ahead of Bernier at 21.44 percent.
Brad Trost was third at 12.19, Pierre Lemieux fourth at 8.58 percent, Kellie Leitch fifth at 5.19 percent, and Erin O’Toole sixth at 4.51 percent.
Of the rest, Michael Chong received 1.35 percent, Kevin O’Leary and Lisa Raitt received .45 percent, Chris Alexander, Steven Blaney, Deepak Obhrai and Rick Peterson received .23 percent and Andrew Saxton received no votes at all.
By the 12th ballot Scheer had expanded his lead in the riding, getting 65.95 percent of the vote compared to 23.31 for Bernier and 10.74 for O’Toole. In the final tally from the 13th and final ballot, Scheer received 72.32 percent of the vote from the riding’s voting members.
Not surprisingly Scheer dominated the voting throughout his home province of Saskatchewan. He topped the balloting in all 14 ridings in the province, including in Saskatoon where local MP Trost was a factor.
Overall, Scheer received 73.8 percent of the vote from throughout Saskatchewan on the final ballot.
