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Kenney won every poll in Calgary-Lougheed, and gathered 7,760 votes, which is now the record for an Alberta by-election candidate in a single-member riding. (Some winners got larger totals when the province had multi-member representation in the big cities from 1909-1955: under those circumstances, when one seat in Calgary or Edmonton came open, the entire city would be eligible to vote.) It is a remarkable number on its face, considering that this is December, and that Calgary-Lougheed is in Alberta, and that every living adult with a job is desperately trying to put work and shopping in some semblance of order for the holidays.

Kenney won every poll, and gathered 7,760 votes

Nearly 8,000 people in one sliver of Calgary could not find anything better to do on a Thursday than to turn out for Jason Kenney in an election he would have found it hard to lose. Don’t they have Netflix down there?

Like every other electoral test Kenney has faced during his campaign to reunite the Alberta right, it ended up being an impressive display of force. If you hang out on social media you might have the idea that Kenney is somehow damaged goods. Outside Alberta his prestige suffers from the lingering aftereffects of Harper Derangement Syndrome. (He’s still lurking! Be vigilant!)

But Alberta never stopped voting for Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, as opposed to the now-extinct provincial PCs, and as the province rebuilds from a recession — with unemployment rates still high — voters here can, if anything, only grow more nostalgic about the broadly successful federal government of which Jason Kenney was an important part.