Hundreds of thousands of Canadians snapped up their Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) membership cards before Friday’s deadline to have a say in who will be their next leader.

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According to Pierre Poilievre’s campaign, the populist candidate’s team managed to sell nearly 312,000 membership cards, an achievement that alone would triple the number of activists in the CCP.

The rising Conservative leader has received support primarily in Alberta (71,759 new members) and Ontario (118,996 new members), according to documents sent to various media outlets. Enthusiasm was far more muted in Quebec, where 25,453 new activists picked up their membership cards, half as many as in British Columbia.

Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown announced that he has sold more than 150,000 membership cards.

“I’m so excited to announce that we DESTROYED our goal for new hires! And it goes on,” he exclaimed on Twitter.

Given that the CPC had about 142,000 members in March, the party would now be a political force uniting more than 600,000 Canadians, to which must be added the members recruited by the other leadership candidates.

Former Quebec Prime Minister Jean Charest did not provide an exact figure, only citing “tens of thousands” of support.

“We are pleased to confirm that we have the necessary points to take the leadership of the Conservative Party! We recruited tens of thousands of new members and mobilized thousands of ex-members,” he said on Twitter.

The three other emerging leaders who are still in the running – Scott Aitchison, Leslyn Lewis and Roman Baber – did not disclose how many activists they managed to rally.

The next CCP leader is scheduled to be elected on September 10th.