Belinda Karahalios returns PCs to power in heavily-eyed Cambridge riding

Belinda Karahalios won the Cambridge seat in the Ontario election for the Progressive Conservative Party.

She unseated Liberal incumbent Kathryn McGarry while also holding off NDP candidate Marjorie-Ann Knight in an all-female battle.

READ MORE:  Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives win majority government

The seat was considered a strong indicator of whether disgruntled Liberal voters would make the move to the Progressive Conservatives or the New Democrats or even choose to stay put.

“The NDP are supposed to be in southwest Ontario,” Darrell Bricker, CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs, told Global News ahead of the election. “If the Liberals are going to lose another riding, who are they going to lose it to? The NDP or the PCs?”

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The Conservatives had held the riding from 1995 until 2014 when McGarry defeated PC contender Rob Leone while the Liberals claimed a majority victory. Her victory marked the first time the Liberals had held the riding since it was created in 1975.

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READ MORE: Ontario election results 2018: Live, real-time riding vote map

The riding was one of two in the Waterloo region where the candidates for the three major parties were all female.

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NDP candidate Laura Mae Lindo came out on top in Kitchener-Centre where she unseated incumbent Liberal Daiene Vernile and PC candidate Mary Henein Thorn.

READ MORE: Mike Harris Jr. wins tight race in Kitchener-Conestoga

In Waterloo, NDP incumbent Catherine Fife held on to her seat holding off challenges from Dan Weber of the Progressive Conservative Party and Liberal Dorothy McCabe.

In Kitchener-Hespeler, Conservative Amy Fee topped Liberal Surekha Shenoy and the NDP’s Fitzroy Vanderpool.

In Kitchener-Conestoga, PC candidate Mike Harris Jr. became the only man elected in Waterloo region as he came out ahead of the NDP’s Kelly E. Dick and Joe Gowing of the Liberal Party.