In the end the margin for David Cameron was huge. The one-time outsider trounced David Davis, the one-time favourite, and he emerges from the contest as the strongest Conservative Party leader since Margaret Thatcher. This is just as well because the challenge facing him and his colleagues is equally huge.
The size of the task ahead is mirrored by the enormity of the risk that the Conservatives are taking in electing someone so inexperienced. Mr Cameron is only 39 years old and a member of parliament for just four-and-a-half years; he only moved into a serious front-bench job earlier this year. He breaks the grammar-school grip on the leadership, being the first Old Etonian since Sir Alec Douglas-Home; not a popularity-booster.
But, for the moment at any rate, he is very popular with the party. The least-fancied of the four candidates at the outset of the contest, he made an unscripted speech at the annual conference which was as fluent as it was passionate. Mr Davis, by contrast, was uninspiring and overnight Mr Cameron became the front-runner. His triumph owes much to the style and the single-mindedness he displayed throughout the campaign. There were no errors. Mr Davis couldn't land a punch and the snowball effect had him out of real contention weeks ago.
That campaign, of course, was the easy part. Mr Cameron must now bring about the unseating of the Labour government. To do that he will need more than his abundant style and charisma. He must fashion an opposition front bench which harnesses the best talents of the party and at the same time cements unity between the modernisers and the right-wingers. In this regard, he needs to display a degree of magnanimity in the post he offers to Mr Davis.
Tony Blair likes to remind voters that he has already seen off four Conservative leaders and is not troubled by the advent of the Cameron era. The prime minister, however, will not be facing up to Mr Cameron come the next election; that honour almost certainly will rest with Gordon Brown, who will be a formidable adversary.
Mr Cameron, unlike his immediate predecessors, is lucky in his timing. The Labour government has become fractious and lacking in confidence. Even Mr Brown is on the backfoot, having conceded this week that the economy will grow this year by only half the rate he predicted during the election campaign. Mr Cameron must offer voters a modernised party with policies which matter, beginning with the issues of poverty and the enormous social exclusion which Labour has failed to take seriously.