The candidates wait at the finish line, the eyes of party members are not only focused on who will win, but also on what the margin of victory will be.

The Canadian Conservative Party will announce its next leader in Ottawa tonight, after candidates and supporters spent the past seven months in the third leadership contest in six years.

The expectations are high for veteran Conservative warrior Pierre Poilievre, who ran a populist campaign centered on the theme of "freedom" in his attempt to win the top prize.

Can he achieve a rare victory on the first ballot?

Gary Keller, a former Conservative Party employee whose roles included serving as chief of staff to Ms. Rona Ambrose, who served as the party's interim leader after Prime Minister Stephen Harper stepped down, said, "I think he can."

Pierre Poilievre will be the first to do so since Harper, who won on his first round in 2004 in his first election to lead the party.

Keller said such a win would be beneficial for party unity because it indicates a clear direction. "Everything united behind one person."

The party uses a points system to sort more than 400,000 votes cast before the polling deadline on Tuesday.

Points are allocated to candidates based on their share of votes they receive in each of the 338 Canadian ridings. Whoever gets more than 50 percent of the points wins.

A ranked ballot is also used, meaning members rank their preferred leader choice from first to last.
If there is no clear winner the first time votes are counted, the candidate with the least support is eliminated, and the votes they received from supporters who chose them first transfer to the candidates those members selected as their second choice.

In 2020, former leader Erin O’Toole took three rounds of counting to surpass the winning threshold.
In the 2017 leadership race, Andrew Scheer only secured a win over presumed front-runner Maxime Bernier on the thirteenth ballot.

But things are different now.
Pierre Poilievre faces only four other candidates, and since the start of the election he has drawn thousands of crowds with his stances against inflation, COVID-19 vaccine mandates, and everything related to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.