Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre easily won Monday’s Battle River-Crowfoot byelection with 80.4 per cent of the vote. If anyone actually expected a different outcome in this extremely safe Alberta riding, they were fooling themselves.

While his victory wasn’t surprising, the fact that he was in this potentially precarious position to begin with certainly was.

Poilievre had served as an MP since 2004 in two Ottawa-based ridings: Nepean-Carleton (redistricted in 2012) and Carleton. He lost to little-known Liberal candidate Bruce Fanjoy in the April 28 election. Several factors likely contributed to it, including: voters having turned away from Conservative candidates in the Ottawa region, concerns related to U.S. President Donald Trump and tariffs, and, as Poilievre suggested in a July

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