WATERLOO REGION - Waterloo Region's voters kicked out two cabinet ministers as part of a provincewide Liberal purge, while electing the son of a former premier, two other Progressive Conservative newcomers and a new NDP member.

One incumbent MPP, Waterloo's Catherine Fife, held her seat. She's headed back to Queen's Park as part of a surging NDP that made significant gains and will become the official opposition for the first time since the 1970s.

Doug Ford and the Ontario PC Party were ushered into power for the first time since 2003, winning a strong majority that includes three new Progressive Conservative menbers from Waterloo Region.

In Kitchener-Conestoga it's Mike Harris Jr., the hand-picked candidate and son of the former premier, controversially appointed by Ford after former MPP Michael Harris was turfed over a flirty BlackBerry conversation from 2012.

Harris, who beat the NDP's Kelly Dick by 636 votes, still hadn't appeared at his campaign's after-party when Doug Ford gave his victory speech.

Former school board trustee Amy Fee will carry the banner in the new riding of Kitchener South-Hespeler. She narrowly beat former boxer Fitz Vanderpool of the NDP to win the seat, in a race where the lead went back and forth as results came in.

Progressive Conservative candidate Brenda Karahalios won in Cambridge, after a protracted and contentious battle within the party for the nomination. The NDP's Marjorie Knight was the runner-up.

For the Liberals, the election was a humiliating defeat. Cambridge's Kathryn McGarry and Kitchener Centre's Daiene Vernile, both cabinet ministers, lost their seats as the Kathleen Wynne-led Grits went from the governing party to a third-place party without official status.

Their collapse ends 15 years of Liberal governments, with the Liberal candidates all finishing a distant third in the region's five ridings.

Vernille was upended by the NDP's Laura Mae Lindo, who was the director of diversity and equity at Wilfrid Laurier University. It was the first time since 1985 that Kitchener Centre has not voted with the winning party.

The NDP took home around 34 per cent of the popular vote, but were outdone by the Tories' 40 per cent of the total vote, which was more evenly spread around the province.

"I know that it was disappointing beyond words that Doug Ford is the premier of this province," said Fife, as she greeted supporters at her victory party in the riding of Waterloo.

"But I also know that we are going to fight his regressive policies at Queen's Park. Doug Ford doesn't know who he's messing with."

The Liberals had their lowest popular support since the 1920s - which some observers suggested could be linked to Wynne's decision to concede defeat five days before the election.

"As soon as the election was called, the Liberals didn't have any upward movement. They just went down and down as far as popular support is concerned," said Anna Esselment, an assistant professor in the department of Political Science at the University of Waterloo.

"It's really surprising to see how bad it was... I don't think many people would have forseen this in January or February."

It appears large swaths of voters stayed home and chose not to vote, which Esselment suggested was partly because a lot of Ontarians were unhappy with their choices. Many centrist voters appeared to feel the Liberals had moved too far to the left, she said.

"There was this vacated middle ground," Esselment said. "When the Liberals and the NDP were lined up, there was very little daylight between them when it came to policies. The PCs were able to really occupy the centre-right of the spectrum."

That narrative meant Liberal candidates were in tough to convince voters to give them another chance.

"I'm here to congratulate her on a well-fought campaign," McGarry said to Karahalios at the Argyle Arms in Preston, after the results became clear.

The voting results suggest there are deep divides within the province, particularly in southwestern Ontario where many urban areas went orange while rural areas went blue. That could make it tricky for Ford to select a representative cabinet.

"If you think about cabinet-making, if the cities outside of Toronto are mostly orange, what do you do in terms of making it representative?" Esselment said.

The Green Party drew fewer votes across Waterloo Region compared to 2014, while voters in Guelph made history -making party leader Mike Schreiner the first Green MPP-elect in Ontario.

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It was one of the strangest elections in recent memory, including the sudden departure of Patrick Brown, the former PC leader, who stepped down in January over accusations of sexual misconduct.

What's clear is the region has four new MPP-elects. At the Edelweiss Tavern in Kitchener South-Hespeler, dozens of Fee supporters cheered as the lead shifted back and forth between their candidate and her NDP challenger.

An even louder cheer erupted when Ford was named as the premier-elect with a strong majority.

"We need a change," said Fee supporter Ana Maria Ruiz. "This is an opportunity for something new."

As New Democrats cheered in a room at the Delta in Waterloo, Vanderpool, the Kitchener-South Hespeler NDP candidate, stood in a hallway outside, shadowboxing as he watched election results come in.

Elections Ontario said new voting technology introduced for this election was expected to keep lines to a minimum, and produce results sooner.

About half the polls had vote tabulators, which electronically counted each ballot and generated the results after polls close. Voters marked their ballot and placed it into a 'secrecy folder' before returning it to the poll official, who feeds the ballot into the tabulator.

The vast majority of voters - about 90 per cent - signed in electronically, skipping the old-fashioned paper-based list.

-with files from Record staff

gmercer@therecord.com, Twitter: @MercerRecord

- Laura Mae Lindo takes Kitchener Centre

- Amy Fee wins Waterloo Region's new riding in tight race

- Belinda Karahalios takes seat from Liberals in Cambridge

- Mike Harris Jr. wins in Kitchener-Conestoga, taking riding previously held by Michael Harris