CALGARY - And so, no national story, no home-town humiliation for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, no back-door exit for the Wildrose-Rob Anders acolytes who staged a riding coup in Calgary Centre.

Joan Crockatt wins a riding for which she and the suburban raiders seem ill-suited - a polyglot area of high and low incomes, several genders, and a swarm of unpollable youth in Beltline towers and walkups.

Those are the people who pushed Mayor Naheed Nenshi into the mayor’s office in 2010. They weren’t mobilized to the same degree this time, despite sidewalk-chalking and sign waving on Monday, especially from Chris Turner’s third-place Green crew.

Harvey Locke of the Liberals made a strong run to finish second. But in the end, the Liberal vote didn’t move much over its campaign-steady 30 per cent.

It was Crockatt’s support that moved - downward.

For a Conservative to finish with less than 40 per cent of the vote in a Calgary riding is a moral defeat; and for Crockatt, a sheet of plywood nailed over Harper’s cabinet door.

Veteran MP Lee Richardson, who triggered the byelection with his resignation to work for Premier Alison Redford, won 55.7 per cent of the vote in 2011, and 55.6 per cent in 2008.

Richardson did that as a proud progressive who convinced gays, immigrants, low-income seniors and the very poor that he was on their side.

His hold on a group that isn’t naturally conservative was astonishing, and admirable. In Upper Mount Royal and the high-income stretches beyond, his appeal was just as natural.

Crockatt’s vote percentage - just a few points above a one-third plurality - shows she has no appeal at all for the vast majority of Calgary Centre voters; nearly 60 per cent of them, in fact.

Locke was certainly fighting history. The last time a Liberal won a Calgary seat was in 1968 when Pat Mahoney, who passed away in June, took Calgary South on the coattails of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s early popularity.

That was before we knew what Trudeau really thought of Alberta.

With a Calgary Conservative Prime Minister in power, the Liberal task was much harder.

But Locke came quite close, despite the bozo eruptions of Ontario MP David McGuinty and even Justin Trudeau, both of whom were outed for anti-Alberta remarks the week before the vote.

They both issued instant apologies that should have been accompanied by sob tracks; but the damage to Locke was likely enough to bump him off the podium.

Voter turnout was was also low; 29.4 per cent of the 93,984 eligible voters. Participation was much higher for other byelections, at 43.9 per cent in Victoria BC and 35.8 per cent in Durham Ont.

That surely hurt the challengers, especially Turner. He worked hard on the downtown and Beltline folks who, in the end, failed to flock to the polls.

Many people will blame Turner’s presence for Locke’s defeat. But it’s equally likely that he took a good many votes away from the Conservatives, especially provincial PC types who didn’t like Crockatt.

“I think a lot of people voting Green are Conservatives who just can’t bring themselves to vote Liberal,” said Alberta Justice Minister Jonathan Denis.

“They’re sending us a message. I’m just not quite sure what it is.”

Well, one message is that for a period of conservative dominance going back more than 60 years, Calgary federal votes have usually been cakewalks for any candidate carrying that identity, from Progressive Conservative through Reform, Alliance and now the Conservative Party of Canada.

Not this time. For once, we saw real political choice at work.

The Conservatives are in again, but they have some thinking to do.

Don Braid’s column appears regularly in the Herald

dbraid@CalgaryHerald.com