Canada PoliticsJustin Trudeau has signed-up 150,000 supporters in Liberal leadership race
We've known for some time that Justin Trudeau was the clear front runner in the Liberal leadership race.
Now we've got the numbers to prove it.
The Toronto Star is reporting that Trudeau's campaign has signed-up approximately 150,000 supporters as of the sign-up deadline on Sunday night.
Nearly three-quarters of these new Trudeau backers are also new to the Liberal party, testing the party out by signing up in a new class called “supporters” — not full, card-carrying members of the party, but eligible to vote in the leadership contest that will be settled April 14.
Conservatives don’t give out membership numbers, but Fred DeLorey, the party’s communications director, noted that the last leadership contest in 2004 put the membership at about 250,000, while the New Democrats reported membership figures of about 128,000 for its 2012 leadership.
150,000 is an impressive number and indicates that attacks launched at Trudeau about a lack of substance — from both within and outside the party — haven't had much of an effect.
[ Related: Justin Trudeau addresses attacks at Liberal debate in Halifax ]
In a tweet on Monday afternoon, Liberal Party president Mike Crawley noted that there was a "huge" pre-cutoff surge of supporters that "exceeded expectations." As a result, the party won't release the total number of supporters until later this week.
In the meantime, the other candidates are dismissing the significance of Trudeau's numbers.
In the post-debate scrum on Sunday — prior to the 150,000 number being published — Marc Garneau suggested that the public not read too much into supporter figures at this point in time.
"It's actually on the 14th who decides who wins," he said.
"There may be supporters who have signed-up who have signed up with individual camps. There may be supporers who have signed-up just with the Liberal Party of Canada.
"It depends what their distribution is. If they're all from one riding, it's as you know each riding is the same weight. And ultimately if you sign up for one particular camp that doesn't mean you have to vote that way."
A spokesperson for Joyce Murray's campaign told Yahoo! Canada News the same thing.
"The only poll that matters is on April 14th," Brenden Johnstone wrote in an email.
[ Related: Polling analysis suggests Liberals are on the rebound, Tories slipping ]
Last week, leadership candidate George Takach withdrew from the race and told Yahoo! that he couldn't keep up with Trudeau's numbers.
"I was signing up supporters in the thousands, Justin was doing it in the the tens of thousands," he quipped
Despite the comments from the Garneau and Murray camps, you have to wonder now, if any of the remaining 8 candidates will follow Takach's lead and throw in the towel prior the final debate on March 23rd.
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