Although the PC leadership candidates and mainstream media have made it very clear they think Tim Houston is the frontrunner, the media has also been confident about who is running second. And that's Cecil Clarke.

As I write, the PC Leadership convention is just kicking off. At this point, the majority of members have either locked in their choices by mail-in ballot or have decided who gets their support this weekend.

If Clarke managed to pry some votes lose from Houston with his late-stage mudslinging, and successfully picked up enough 2nd, 3rd, 4th ballot support, then he'll sputter past Houston with a political gas tank running on fumes.

If that happens, PC members will have to decide if the guy arriving with an empty tank was really the right idea to pit against Premier McNeil.

After all, McNeil not only survived the last election, but he also held his majority. And it's possible that McNeil, Mombourquette, MacLellan and many of their Liberal supporters will join Clarke's supporters in being very happy if he is declared PC leader.

While Clarke critics like myself may be expected, by way of our bias, to predict Clarke's inability to win Premier, the data actually provides support for this argument.

It's not to say Clarke can't win an election. He's certainly proved that he can do so.

What he hasn't proven is that he's able to grow support once in a leadership role. That's the pattern. Clarke consistently loses support in his roles and then he leaves before he can be defeated.

This pattern is evident in his unwillingness to challenge for MP again, in his departure from his role as provincial MLA, and also in his mayoral role in the CBRM.

Let me break down the data for you.

Clarke started out in 1997 trying for a Federal role as MP in Sydney-Victoria. With 22.6% support when the votes came in, he started his political career. There's no harm in losing. It was the start of his career, he took a shot, and he failed. Only one person can win.

But this was Clarke's first big exit.

As he was soundly defeated in his run for MP, he didn't run again. Instead, he went after a provincial MLA role in a by-election, and this time he won with just 38.1% of the vote. But it was a win nonetheless.

If you're a Clarke supporter, at this point, you're making sure that I acknowledge that he would go on to win his MLA spot three more times in a row, demonstrating a winning record. And you're right, he did.

In 2006, his third election as MLA, he had his highest support running for MLA at 50.7% of votes in favour of him. That was his peak.

Then, by 2009, his support dropped off.

Clarke came close to losing with his NDP challenger finishing with just 164 votes less than Clarke.

The message was clear. Clarke was losing support and was in danger of losing the next election.

This set the stage for his next exit point.

By 2011, Clarke hadn't finished his term as MLA, but he resigned anyway, to challenge Mark Eyking for Federal MP in Sydney, Victoria.

Clarke was now back to where he started, but this time with a by-election, and three successful MLA bids on his political resume. He had accumulated real campaign and political experience. But there was a problem.

The problem was that Clarke jumped ship from his MLA role after just scraping by, by just 164 votes, clearly losing support, and clearly in danger of losing if he ran again.

Rather than lose at MLA, he tried to win as MP instead.

He lost again.

But in 2011 his performance running for MP was better. Losing by just 860 votes, there was a path to victory hidden somewhere, but he just didn't find it.

His great political misjudgement was that his political decline in support was regional. And that near-loss as an MLA carried over into a loss in his next MP bid.

With a gap of just 860 votes to close, Clarke could have run again to challenge Eyking. But instead, he followed the pattern and exited.

With time to burn, with no elected role, he was tucked into a consulting role to do something for a bunch of money, before popular Mayor John Morgan's decision to not run again created an opening that both Clarke and Eyking would appreciate.

When the champion of the Equalization Fairness stepped aside (John Morgan), the leading opposer of Equalization Fairness (Cecil Clarke) stepped in.

If Mayor John Morgan had reoffered, it's a near certainty that Clarke wouldn't have run. He wouldn't fancy the idea of losing two in a row. But with Morgan out of the running, and going against Rankin MacSween, Clarke won by his most impressive margin in his career, taking 58.6% of the vote.

Achieving a strong win in his mayoral bid was short-lived.

The pattern of loss of support began immediately. One of the greatest impacts to his support came from the Northside. It turns out, you can't take away a green space in the downtown of North Sydney (Archibald's Wharf) in spite of the immense community opposition and still maintain a high level of support.

How he actually loses support is well documented and extensively debated.

But the pattern is clear. If he loses an election bid or loses support that puts him at risk, he jumps ship and tries something else.

And so the pattern continued when he had a major scare in his 2016 mayoral rematch with Rankin MacSween. Although MacSween lead in the early voting, many believe the Thanksgiving Day storm changed things for MacSween. Clarke won, but this time he had hemorrhaged more than 5,200 voters, sending a clear message that he was once again on the decline.

Although on the night of his election he was just beginning his second term as mayor, he was seething with anger and ready to lash out at MacSween supporters. And despite the immense efforts that his own supporters made to back him in his reelection, he immediately declared that it was his last term.

Once again, he was jumping ship. This time, in very poor taste, he was declaring it on the night of his election.

With many issues in the CBRM, Clarke continued his controversial and polarizing path as mayor. The uprising of three young, progressive, and bold new councillors (Amanda McDougall, Earlene MacMullin, and Kendra Coombes) created further opportunities for his leadership weaknesses to be exposed.

In fact, growing public support for Councillor McDougall showed there had quickly emerged a direct pathway for her to replace him as mayor, taking the role whether he gave it up, or ran for it again. In polling at goCapeBreton.com, with head-to-head matchups with Rankin MacSween, Geoff MacLellan, and John Morgan, only Morgan was able to edge Amanda McDougall in those polls by a very narrow margin. She was neck and neck with a mayor that was winning his elections by landslides.

So with declining support, and consistent political ambition, Clarke did what Clarke does.

This time he opted for an exit while still holding onto his mayoral role (and salary), and went off to try to win the PC leadership.

Despite the PC leadership being something he should have had support for earlier in his career, Rodney MacDonald, and Jamie Baille got in his way. MacDonald would hold a short-lived PC majority government. Baille would lose twice before being compelled to resign. And yet, both men were preferred within the party over Clarke who did not step up to challenge them for the leadership.

In Clarke's current PC leadership bid, he's not out of the race until the final votes are tallied. But he's repeating the same error that he hobbled himself with when he ran unsuccessfully against Eyking.

He lost support in a region that also impacts his chances of becoming the PC leader. If it wasn't already clear enough, it's fairly obvious that taking the position of "abolishing Equalization" to the CBRM, while Tim Houston advocates doubling it for the CBRM is a strange kind of political strategy.

You can't really leverage a slingshot effect of support from one role to another if you're rapidly losing support in that role.

It's for that reason that one of two things is very likely to occur as a result.

1. Clarke will not win the PC leadership.

But if he does:

2. He will not be the one to lead the PC party to a victory over Stephen McNeil and the Liberals.

A few weeks ago, when asked in an active session of CBRM Council, Mayor Cecil Clarke refused to answer when asked if he would resign should he win the PC leadership. 

There's a reason he didn't answer.

What Clarke probably doesn't want the public to know is that his team gives every indication that they believe he's losing his leadership bid, stopping short of just coming out and declaring it.

And if he thinks he's losing, he's going to need the mayoral job back. It provides him with a salary and photo opportunities with the second berth late next year, in preparation for whatever his next exit is.

But if he's lost support within the CBRM, and lost support at the provincial level, and can't win as MP... the next question is:

If he exits his role of Mayor, where does he try to go next?

This may be his last big chance, unless Mark Eyking or Rodger Cuzner retire, and leave what looks like a soft opening. Perhaps his remaining CBRM supporters could finally carry him through to victory. Perhaps he would finally get the chance to join his friend, MP Lisa Raitt, in Ottawa where he's always wanted to be.

If the pattern I've described holds, Clarke probably won't be the PC leader.

If he does secure the role, he's still an incredible long shot to ever become Premier of Nova Scotia. If the PC members give him the shot, they'll be responsible for being unaware of or ignoring the patterns, and, in so doing, missing out on the possibilities of running a promising young leader like Tim Houston whose own political pattern has been growing in supporters after voters get to know him as a leader.

NOTE: The views expressed above are my own and do not represent lokol (goCapeBreton.com). Read more