Last weekend's election of Andrew Scheer as the federal Conservative Party leader came as a surprise to a veteran political analyst.

Brandon University Political Science Professor Kelly Saunders calls what happened an interesting process.

"Even though, certainly, Andrew Scheer was polling quite well," she says, "Usually he would be in the top three, but I was a little bit surprised, given that (Maxime) Bernier, given the fact that he had led consistently, and certainly in the 12 rounds that happened on Saturday, and he certainly was the candidate to raise the most money, over-all, I was expecting that he would win. So, for me, it was a little bit of an upset."

Saunders feels Scheer brings some positives to the position of Opposition leader.

"He's young, at only 38 years of age, which I think is really good for the party," she says, "It brings a new, youthful perspective/dynamic to the table, and certainly to take on (Justin) Trudeau. I think he'll be a good consensus leader for the party, in the sense that he was able to draw on various factions within the party."

At the same time, Saunders thinks he'll have to strike a balance in dealing with party factions, noting he represents more of the right-of-centre positions.

"Now, that's going to be a good thing, and a bad thing," she says, "In the sense that, certainly a good thing is he was able to bring together the different groups within the party, but bad, in the sense that he's going to have to walk that social conservative line very carefully -- how party members feel about social conservative issues, certainly not necessarily reflective of how mainstream Canadians feel about those issues."

Andrew Scheer