STONEY CREEK, ONT. — Andrea Horwath’s election gamble won New Democrats new ridings but cost the party a hand on the lever of power as the Liberals swept to a majority government.

Horwath had boasted that her party had momentum going into Thursday’s election and the results produced breakthrough wins in Windsor, Oshawa and Sudbury but saw party stalwart Rosario Marchese defeated in Trinity-Spadina, losing to Liberal Han Dong.

NDP incumbent Jonah Schein also lost to a Liberal challenger in Davenport.

Speaking to a small crowd here at her election headquarters, Horwath — who had said she was running for the premier’s chair — said the election result wasn’t the outcome that New Democrats were hoping for.

“But New Democrats are fighters and we are going to keep fighting,” Horwath said.

Horwath, who spoke to Wynne Thursday night, said that NDP MPPs would work with “all MPPs to deliver results for people.”

Talking to reporters later, Horwath expressed pleasure in her party’s election showing, citing the wins and an uptick in voter support for the NDP.

“I did a good job as leader of my party in taking our message to the people of Ontario. We did increase our popular support. We grew in other parts of Ontario, which I think is extremely important,” she said.

And she said she had no regrets in triggering the election with her refusal to back the minority Liberals and their spring budget.

“It was the right decision to make at the time. People now have had their choice and so we will work with the choice,” Horwath said.

Asked what was gained by the election, Horwath said, “people were able to make a decision and that’s all along what I had said was important.”

“My job is to respect that choice,” she said.

She said the New Democrats would continue to push for action on jobs and affordability issues.

The NDP went into the election with 21 seats — 17 won in the 2011 general election and four more picked up in by-elections — as results were tallied Thursday, the party was holding steady at 21.

Horwath, a former Hamilton city councillor first elected to the legislature a decade ago, easily held her Hamilton Centre seat.

She said she was disappointed that the two Toronto MPPs had lost their seats. “We’ve made gains in other parts of the province and what we’re going to do is move forward as a strong caucus,” she said.

The NDP’s strategy this campaign was to spend less time in NDP-held ridings and instead go after rival seats. That was driven home on Horwath’s eight-stop marathon day on Wednesday that took her to Missisauga, Brampton, Toronto, Oshawa, Belleville and Kingston.

“Our caucus talked very much that we wanted to grow, that we’re on a growth strategy. That meant that our MPPs took care of their home turf and we were able to expand into other areas,” Horwath said Thursday.

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It was a strategy that built on the NDP’s by-election successes, notably in 2012 when New Democrat Catherine Fife won in Kitchener-Waterloo, a long-time Progressive Conservative stronghold. And in 2013 New Democrat Percy Hatfield won the riding of Windsor-Tecumseh, which had been held by former Liberal cabinet minister Dwight Duncan before he retired from politics.

Still, for Horwath the election was a roll of the dice and one that sparked the wrath of some in NDP quarters, who were angry at her refusal to back a Liberal budget billed as one of the most progressive in recent memory.

Those tensions spilled into public view when 34 past and present NDP supporters wrote a scathing letter to Horwath, saying they were “deeply distressed” about the party’s direction under her leadership.

“It is not clear whether you have given up on progressive voters or you are taking them for granted,” stated the May 23 letter, which included the signatures of Michele Landsberg, a high-profile journalist, Judy Rebick, Cathy Crowe, a long-time advocate on social and homelessness issues and Winnie Ng, a labour rights activist.

But Horwath pushed back against the criticism, saying that Liberal “corruption” had to be stopped, even though the Liberal budget pledged action on many NDP priorities and had the backing of NDP-friendly union leaders.

Horwath said the chances of the Liberals making good on those pledges was “slim to none” and she said the Ontario residents were tired of Liberal “corruption.”

“When I had the decision in front of me, it was clear that people had had enough of Liberal behaviour, they had had enough of the waste and disrespect that Liberals have shown Ontarians,” she said Thursday in Toronto.

Indeed, while the NDP unveiled a platform that included populist goodies, such as a tuition freeze, a cut to auto insurance and extra cash for transit expansion, Horwath was clearly hoping that voter anger over Liberal scandals would drive voters into her corner on election day.

But she also faced a battle to keep the New Democrats from being squeezed out of a political contest that became sharply polarized by the Conservative vows to cut the provincial payroll by 100,000 positions.

And she had to fight off the late-campaign efforts by the Liberals to strip away votes from the New Democrats. Horwath implored NDP supporters not to be swayed by fear-mongering by her rivals.

At every campaign stop, Horwath told voters they had a choice in this election that went beyond the Tories and Liberals.

“You don’t have to choose between bad ethics and bad math,” became the catchphrase of the NDP campaign.

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