Conservative MP Maxime Bernier, businessman Kevin O’Leary, and Conservative MP Andrew Scheer are considered the top three contenders of the 14 contestants vying for the party’s leadership, say Conservative Party insiders.

“I just keep hearing those three names as either people’s first or second choice on the ballot,” said Chad Rogers, a partner with Crestview Strategy in Toronto and former Conservative staffer. Mr. Rogers said the three names were the ones Conservatives were talking about at the recent Manning Conference in Ottawa.

In interviews with The Hill Times, Conservative insiders said the three names are coming up based on their personal assessments of all 14 candidates’ performances so far and based on conversations with Conservatives Party members from across the country.

With the Conservative Party leadership in its final stretch, the candidates are stepping up their game, insiders said, and their list of top contenders could also change in the coming weeks.

Yet some insiders also described the leadership contest as “boring” and said that a significant number of average party members are still in the wait-and-see mode, however, more party members will get more engaged as the May 27 convention date approaches.

“It’s certainly not as exciting as an Oscar awards show where the presenter gets the main film wrong,” said Tim Powers, vice chairman of Summa Strategies, a veteran Conservative who has been actively involved in Conservative politics since the Brian Mulroney era. “It’s livened up in the last little while with Mr. O’Leary’s entrance. As we get closer to May, there’ll be some more interest in it.”

In his assessment, Mr. Powers said, Mr. Bernier has the best ground organization of all candidates and Mr. O’Leary has attracted a lot of interest from Conservatives and other Canadians across the country.

“Bernier probably has got the best ground game of anybody, at least so far,” said Mr. Powers. “At this point, O’Leary is probably still in the top contender bracket just because there’s a curiosity around him and strong name recognition. Then there’s Scheer.”

In total, 14 candidates are running for the Conservative Party’s leadership, including nine incumbent MPs, three former Conservative MPs and two businessmen. The Conservative MPs are: Michael Chong (Wellington-Halton Hills, Ont.), Kellie Leitch (Simcoe-Grey, Ont.), Mr. Bernier (Beauce, Que.), Deepak Obhrai (Calgary Forest Lawn, Ont.), Mr. Scheer (Regina-Qu’Appelle, Sask.), Erin O’Toole (Durham, Ont.), Steven Blaney (Bellechasse -Les Etchemins -Lévis, Que.) Lisa Raitt (Milton, Ont.), and Mr. Trost. Former Conservative MPs Pierre Lemieux, Chris Alexander and Andrew Saxton have also thrown their hats in the ring. The other two candidates include Mr. O’Leary and businessman Rick Peterson.

The last date to buy Conservative Party membership for new members to be eligible to vote in the May 27 leadership convention is March 28. The party members who meet this deadline can mail in their ballot, vote at a party-arranged polling station or vote on-site in Toronto at the convention centre. The Conservative Party is using the preferential ballot system in which party members will mark all leadership candidates numerically from most to least preferred, with the least favourite dropping off after the first ballot. The second and third choices on the eliminated candidates’ ballots will be added to the remaining candidates’ votes and all votes will be counted again. The process will be repeated until someone receives at least 50 per cent plus one of the votes. All 338 ridings across the country are weighted equally and have 100 points each, making the total 33,800 points. The leadership contest winner would need at least 16,900 points.

All 14 candidates running for the leadership have paid $100,000 to the party, including a $50,000 non-refundable registration fee and a $50,000 refundable compliance fee. It appears unlikely that any candidate would withdraw at this stage because the candidate would lose $50,000.

But the party’s ballot papers only allow party members to rank only 10, not 14, leadership candidates. Some leadership campaigns have questioned the party’s decision not to allow its paid members to rank all 14 candidates.

“Members of the party who vote because the system has this glitch in it will not be able to fully exercise their franchise as they were told they were going to. That’s all,” Joseph Ben-Ami, campaign director for Mr. Trost’s campaign, told The Hill Times two weeks ago. “Brad believes that, in principle, that’s wrong. As a practical matter, maybe at the end of the day it doesn’t make that much difference. As a principle it’s wrong.”

The Conservative Party has not explained why party members are not allowed to rank all 14 candidates and did not indicate if the party has any plans to fix this glitch.

“Our election system vendor we use is Dominion Voting. They are Canada’s largest election voting system company,” wrote, Cory Hann, Conservative Party’s director of communications in an email to The Hill Times, two weeks ago.

“They’ve previously provided voting systems to both the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party in leadership elections, and has had their systems used in both Canada, the U.S., and internationally for all types of elections. All official candidates in our race will be listed on the ballot. Party members will be able to rank up to ten of their choices, should they choose,” Mr. Hann said.

It’s also highly unlikely that anyone would be able to win on the first ballot. This means, it could take as many as 10 or more counts for the winner to get the required 16,900 points.

In a recent analysis, CBC’s Éric Grenier wrote that, based on his Conservative Leadership Index, Mr. Bernier and Mr. O’Leary would be the front-runners on the first-ballot. He said the index is “an estimate of where the candidates would likely finish on the first ballot of the vote if that vote occurred today.” He also wrote that the index was calculated using the average results of four different metrics: endorsement points, fundraising, contributors, and polls.

According to a Mainstreet poll of 839 Conservative Party members conducted for iPolitics and released on March 8, Mr. O’Leary and Mr. Bernier were also leading the pack with 23.9 and 19.07 per cent support, respectively. The poll also revealed that 18.1 per cent of the Conservatives who participated in the poll described themselves as undecided. The margin of error for this poll was plus or minus 3.37 per cent, 19 times out of 20. The poll indicated the following support for the other candidates: Mr. Scheer 7.8 per cent; Ms. Raitt 7.1 per cent; Ms. Leitch 6.3 per cent; Mr. Chong 3.8 per cent; Mr. O’Toole 2.6 per cent; Mr. Blaney 2.3 per cent; Mr. Lemieux 2.2 per cent; Mr. Trost 2.1 per cent; Mr. Alexander 2.1 per cent; Mr. Saxton 1.07 per cent; Mr. Obhrai 0.6 per cent; and Mr. Peterson 0.4 per cent.

Keith Beardsley, a former deputy chief of staff to former prime minister Stephen Harper, said that Mr. Bernier, Mr. O’Leary and Mr. Scheer stand out as top contenders, at this time, as they “appeal to a broad spectrum of people.” But he pointed out that some of Mr. O’Leary’s colourful statements are giving a lot of ammunition to the Liberal Party. So if the TV personality ends up winning the contest, Mr. Beardsley said, the Liberals would have an “unbelievable” amount of political ammunition to use against the Conservative Party in the 2019 election.

“He’s all over the map. It’s hard to say what the hell is he doing,” said Mr. Beardsley, referring to Mr. O’Leary’s statements such as considering selling Senate seats, skipping the party-organized Edmonton leadership debate because he thought the format was “terrible” and saying he wanted to use a “big spatula” to scrape “crap out of Ottawa.”

“Jesus Murphy, for a bright guy, you have to wonder [why is he making such statements],” said Mr. Beardsley.

Mr. Beardsley also said the Conservative Party leadership race, which started last March, has been “too long” and “too boring.” He said party members are anxious and want get the party ready for the next election.

“Impatient would be the right word,” said Mr. Beardsley. “We want this over and new leader in the House. It’s simple as that. You want to see someone organizing the party. Getting it ready, it’s never too early to start to get ready for the next election.”

Mr. Powers said a significant chunk of Conservative Party members are undecided and there isn’t a “full emboldened movement just to charge forward and take back government” because party members don’t know who to follow. He said after winning the contest, the new leader’s first job will be to convince the Conservative Party caucus and party members—with solid arguments backed up by actions—that they can win the next election.

“There’s no sense [whether] the next leader will be the next prime minister,” said Mr. Powers. “He or she is going to have to work for that, including with their own party members who need to be convinced that, whoever the leader is, that he or she has a plan to move forward, beyond what they’ve said in the leadership race. Selling job one is going to be with the party and the caucus depending who actually wins.”

Mr. Powers said candidates putting out socially conservative policies might not be helpful to the party in the next election. If the party wants to win the next election, he said, the Conservatives will have to embrace progressive policies.

“I don’t think anybody sees the path to victory, whether being 2019 or an election after that, being paved by a full embrace of social conservatism,” Mr. Powers said. “That isn’t where the world is heading. They’re heading in the opposite direction.”

The Hill Times