David Cameron will fall 19 seats short of a Commons majority, according to a joint BBC/Sky/ITV exit poll.
The Conservatives would have 307 MPs, up 97 on 2005, Labour would have 255, down 94, and the Lib Dems 59, down 3. Nationalists and others would have 29.
That means Labour and the Lib Dems together could not have a majority.
Update: Cspan3 has live UK election coverage for those interested.
Exit Polls are notoriously unreliable – they got it entirely wrong in a recent election. The problem is that in each constituency we have a first past the post system, which means that however well other parties do, it does not count as it is only the candidate with the most votes in that constituency who becomes the MP. We are electing individuals rather than parties. So the shape of Parliament is determined by the sum of the winners of those individual elections. Thus a party with the higher number of votes may not get the highest number of MPs if its support is disproportionately high in a few seats and dispersed in the majority of seats.
The other thing to remember in the UK is that results tend to come in from urban and industrial constituencies early and country and island constituencies later and this means that labour wins tend to come in first and liberal democrat and conservative results quite a bit later. It is only by tomorrow morning that we will have some idea of how things are moving. Half the results should be in by 4 am here and accelerate after that.
One thing has arisen however, and that is in the labour wins so far – about 4, the swing in votes to the conservatives from labour is in the region of 7-9.5%, considerably more than the exit or other polls predicted, and this may be a trend worth watching as it may indicate conservatives moving towards an overall Parliamentary majority which would enable them to form a government. The wild card is still the impact of liberal democrat votes. However it is much too early to do anything other than take note of this interesting and extreme swing in very early results.
2 other things:
1. Major upset in N.Ireland as the leader of the NI Assembly and head of the democratic unionist party, Peter Robinson has lost his seat at Westminster. He remains part of the NI Assembly. He and his wife have been involved in recent financial scandals.
2. Gordon Brown has indicated that even if his party comes below other parties in MP numbers, in a hung Parliament, he will try to hang on to power by making alliances with others. I think that will come across very badly here, and I am not sure other parties will want, or be wise, to play ball. Signs of increasing panic and desperation from Government Ministers in interviews, notably David Milliband who could hardly keep his composure.
So – it is all very interesting, and still anything could happen. Ignore the BBC, they are providing the most biased reporting out. Sky is much better, and ITV.
The spheres are moving.
This comment is helpful to my understanding. Thanks.
A hour and a half after Pageantmaster’s update, it seems clear that there’s no uniform swing – spectacular gains and narrow misses for the Conservatives in every region. It’s all very odd. Leading politicians in all three parties are uniformly refusing to make predictions when asked.
On a positive note, we have greatly increased turnout; on a more negative one, a number of polling offices were caught flat-footed by that turnout and some polls closed with people still waiting in line to vote.
Interestingly, Montgomeryshire in central Wales – which has been a Liberal seat since 1880 (with only one break from 1979 to 1983) – turned out their flamboyant Liberal Democrat MP, Lembit Opik (not a native Welshman, as you might gather) for a Tory.
The reports are that we are in hung Parliament territory, but certainly now at 70% of seats declared, I think it may be very close to a conservative overall majority.
I have been following the number of conservative seats, dividing them by seats declared and multiplying by number of seats [650]. For quite a period this has resulted in a projection of 320-323 seats for the conservatives. This has stayed consistently the projection. In many results so far there has been a consistent 8% swing to Conservatives. If this continues on a straight line basis they are touching the 326 for an overall majority.
In addition the results for the Liberal Democrats have not lived up to their expectations. At the moment a coalition of them with Labour would not exceed the Conservative numbers so they could not command a majority of the Commons, although it is tight.
Two things may affect things:
1. Results we are waiting for are from rural and outlying areas where one would expect a higher percentage of conservative votes proportionately; and
2. London results are still awaited – this is the wild card, and a big one. London is often a national barometer which gives a clear indication of national trends.
So it looks like the Conservatives are on course for being the largest party, and quite possibly with a working majority over Labour and LibDem combined and very close to an overall majority. I think that things will get clearer before long.
But that is just how it looks at the moment.
Pageantmaster, with whom will the Conservatives attempt to form a majority? It seems this morning that they are still short. Also, will reported voting problems end with a new election being called?
Hello Katherine.
This has been absolutely fascinating. All but two of the results are now in, and the Conservatives have taken their ninety-seventh seat from other parties. But this leaves them short of an absolute parliamentary majority, which would mean that even a minority government with the largest number of MPs would risk instability, were the other parties to gang up on them, and lead to negotiation of every single vote.
Following an offer from Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats this morning that the Conservatives should have the opportunity to form a government, rather than stick with Labour who are still the incumbents, after lunch, David Cameron made an offer to Clegg to talk about either [1] an arrangement to allow the Conservatives to loosely run a minority government with crucial lib dem support; or alternatively [2] to have a wider cooperation agreement which might even give senior LibDems some positions in a government. This has been expressed as being done in the interests of stable government for the country to enable the financial crisis to be made the priority. The two parties have very different policies but there are wide areas where they are in agreement, in particular on handling the economy.
It is clear from Brown’s conduct since he returned to Downing Street, that he will engage in whatever it takes to stay there, even though he has lost heavily to Cameron, he has tried to take control of the negotiation process through civil servants. The other parties are having none of it. He will have to be prised out of Downing Street like a clam from a shell.
Talks start this evening, and if successful will be approved by the parties over the weekend, so we may have a government by Monday. We are into uncharted territory.
Results to date:
Conservatives: 305 [+97]
Labour: 258 [-91]
Lib Dems: 57 [-5]
[For overall majority need control of 326 seats out of 650 total in the House of Commons]
The Sun sez: this
BBC: this
Times: this
Fascinating. Thank you, Pageantmaster. At least you are not part of the Eurozone.
I would like to add a comment on the results. The country is more polarised than ever. The Conservatives now are the party of most of England, with footholds in Wales. The Labour Party is the party of the big conurbations of the Midlands and North, of Wales and Scotland. In Scotland there is only one Tory MP. It all feels a bit like the red and blue states of the USA.