A woman casts her vote for the federal election in a polling station on Toronto's Ward Island on Monday May 2, 2011. (Chris Young/The Canadian Press)

By CBC News

The election has now come to a close with many dramatic and unpredicted realignments to the country's political landscape. Canadians can now "turn the page on the uncertainties and repeat elections of the past seven years," Stephen Harper said Monday night as voters delivered the Conservative leader his first majority government.

NDP Leader Jack Layton will now become the Official Opposition leader and replace Michael Ignatieff, who himself was defeated in his own Toronto riding. Ignatieff's Liberals -- often touted as Canada's "natural governing party" -- placed a distant third behind Layton's party.

With 99 per cent of polls reporting, the Conservatives won 167 seats, followed by the NDP with 102, Liberals with 34 and the Bloc Québécois with four and the Green Party with one. A party needs to capture 155 seats to win a majority in the House of Commons.

The  NDP, who nearly tripled their seat count, made a major breakthrough in Quebec, mostly at the expense of the Bloc, gaining 67 seats. The loss of 45 Bloc seats in the province prompted party leader Gilles Duceppe to announce he would resign.

In his concession speech, the Liberal leader Ignatieff offered "open-hearted" congratulations to Harper and Layton -- "two opponents who have had the better of the night" -- and accepted responsibility for the result.

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May earned her party's first elected seat in Canadian political history, defeating former Conservative cabinet minister Gary Lunn in the British Columbia riding of Saanich-Gulf Islands.

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(The survey is not scientific. The results are based on the readers' responses.)