Here's the number Todd Doherty, the MP-elect for Cariboo-Prince George, should concentrate on for the next four years: 63.5.
That's the percentage of people in his riding who voted for someone other than him in Monday's federal election.
Put another way, only 19,418 votes of the 53,271 ballots cast picked Doherty. Everybody else - all 33,853 of them - wanted somebody else to be their MP.
That's a number that will actually inspire Doherty, a man not intimidated by challenges or rough patches on the road, whether it's handling revenue generation for the 2015 Canada Winter Games, coming out on top of a grueling back room battle to secure the Conservative nomination last December or slogging through a marathon election campaign.
If anything, Doherty will have to manage expectations when it comes to his visibility and work ethic in the riding once he takes his seat in the House of Commons.
Doherty started actively campaigning in January, assembling his team, getting organized and hitting the road for what must have seemed like endless meetings, appearances, fundraisers and one-on-one conversations.
It seemed like overkill at first.
After all, he was running to succeed Dick Harris, the Conservative who held the same riding for 22 years and turned it into a Tory stronghold. Furthermore, area Liberals and NDP members hadn't even started preparing for the fall election, never mind choosing candidates, while Doherty was already racking up the miles and the handshakes.
It seemed like he was everywhere. If there was a public event where three or more people might attend, more often than not it was when, not if, Doherty would show up to introduce himself and make new connections.
To his credit, he never took the riding or its voters for granted.
Even with no one directly competing against him until the middle of August, he still headed out each day as if the political hounds were nipping at his heels and a formidable opponent was up five points on him in the latest polls. He wore out shoes on his feet and tires on his truck.
He drove the equivalent of the circumference of the planet before the election was even called and then kept going, starting each day early and ending it late.
That level of commitment paid off. When his campaign floundered, when both Liberal candidate Tracy Calogheros and NDP candidate Trent Derrick picked up momentum, when he turned in some lacklustre performances at all-candidate forums, when the polls and the pundits were discouraging, he had the momentum and the support to stay the path.
Going forward, Doherty is in a good position. He's a small-c conservative, not a hardline Harper Conservative, so much so that Calogheros even once asked him during a debate which party he was campaigning for.
With Harper stepping aside, Doherty is well-placed for the post-Harper rebuild, helping steer the Conservatives back into the middle of the political spectrum to challenge for power again in four years.
Joining him in opposition to the Justin Trudeau government will be his Conservative colleague Bob Zimmer, representing Prince George-Peace River-Northern Rockies, as well as Nathan Cullen, the returning NDP MP for Skeena-Bulkley Valley.
Although separated by party ideology, all three men will be united in representing Northern B.C. and in holding the governing Liberals to account. They will be working together far more often than against one another over the next four years. The entire region can only benefit from their collaboration.
For Doherty, he will have two mentors in Zimmer and Cullen to help him get off to a running start once he reaches Ottawa.
That hustle Doherty showed before and during the campaign will also serve him well and, by extension, help him serve his constituents well.
As for satisfying the 63.5 per cent that weren't behind him, that's a challenge Doherty likely relishes.
Politicians are, by nature, competitive and that competitive drive helped him win what many thought was going to be a cake walk of a campaign.
Looking ahead four years, Doherty no doubt wants to win again but reduce that 63.5 figure significantly.
That desire to prove himself, to win, to succeed, to keep working, all of those attributes will help Doherty serve Cariboo-Prince George well.
