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Add it up, and it won’t be enough to dominate in one region or another: candidates will have to do well across the country. A polarizing candidate can’t count on the other candidates splitting the vote: he’ll need to get second and third choices. And he won’t be able to squeak through with a minority of the vote: he’ll need to win an outright majority.

Of course, it’s theoretically possible that a wave of O’Learymania could carry the candidate to a first-ballot victory. But here’s where some of the other differences kick in. Unlike Trump, O’Leary can’t spend his own millions on his campaign: he has to rely on the same maximum $1,500 individual donations as everyone else. Neither can he go out and buy up thousands of new memberships, en masse, as candidates might have in the past: party rules require new members to pay for their own memberships, with a credit card. And there is less than 10 weeks left for new members to join.

So he is unlikely to win, as Trump did, with the help of masses of uncommitted “walk-in” voters. He’s going to have to appeal to the base of existing Conservative members, in riding associations across the country; and not sequentially, as in a U.S. primary, but all on the same day. Here again he faces daunting obstacles.

While O’Leary shares some similarities with Trump, including a U.S. mailing address, he differs from him in important ways.

He has no history in the party, knows few of its members, has but a handful of endorsements. He is starting late, meaning he has to raise funds and put together an organization from scratch that other candidates have had months to amass. And his inability to speak French likely means he starts by writing off Quebec, with nearly 25 per cent of the ridings.