EDMONTON — Federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and 213 others vying for a seat in the House of Commons will be in the spotlight Monday, as voters in a rural Alberta riding head to the polls.

Two political science professors say Poilievre is expected to handily win the byelection in Battle River-Crowfoot, a sprawling eastern Alberta riding stretching from Edmonton to Calgary. The riding and its previous incarnations have been a Tory stronghold for a century.

They say the only question is: by how much?

"In every election from 2004 to 2025, the vote share garnered by the Conservatives' winning candidate has been at least 80 per cent," said Julie Simmons with the University of Guelph in Ontario.

The one exception was in 2021, when Conservative incumbent Damien Kurek got 71 per cen

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