The exit poll has been published showing the widely expected Labour landslide with Keir Starmer’s party winning 410 seats and a majority of 170. Here are the poll results from the BBC:
Labour is set to win a General Election landslide with a majority of 170, according to an exit poll for the BBC, ITV and Sky.
If the forecast is accurate, it means Sir Keir Starmer will become prime minister with 410 Labour MPs – just short of Tony Blair’s 1997 total.
The Conservatives are predicted to slump to 131 MPs, their lowest number in post-war history.
The Liberal Democrats are projected to come third with 61 MPs.
The Scottish National Party will see its number of MPs fall to 10 and Reform U.K. is forecast to get 13 MPs, according to the exit poll.
The Green Party of England and Wales is predicted to double its number of MPs to two and Plaid Cymru is set to get four MPs. Others are forecast to get 19 seats.
The exit poll, overseen by Sir John Curtice and a team of statisticians, is based on data from voters at about 130 polling stations in England, Scotland and Wales. The poll does not cover Northern Ireland.
At the past five General Elections, the exit poll has been accurate to within a range of 1.5 and 7.5 seats.
Not as huge a majority as many were predicting, and slightly less than Blair’s 1997 haul of 418 seats and majority of 178, but still ample to do whatever the party wants. Tories not the near-total wipeout that some polls suggested, but 131 is still a terrible result – their lowest ever. Reform in the middle of its predictions on 13, but way below some of the more hopeful ones – though Sir John Curtice, who led the exit poll, comments: “How many seats Reform will win is highly uncertain – our model suggests there are many places where they have some – but a relatively low – chance of winning.” SNP plummets from 48 to 10, a fitting reward for its woeful record in Scotland and on woke issues. Lib Dems get their best result for a century (or ever; 100 years ago they were still the old Liberal Party). At least the Conservatives are still the Official Opposition – a Left-wing opposition to Labour would have been truly soul-dissolving. It’s going to be a long five years.
Electoral Calculus estimates published by GB News suggest that Labour could win its landslide on a vote share of just 36.1% – less than Jeremy Corbyn’s 40% when he lost in 2017 – with the Tories on 25.8%, Reform on 17.2% and the Lib Dems on 9.4%. If that’s right, it shows how broken the First Past the Post voting system is.
Former Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson gave Sky News a pithy summary of why it all went wrong for Sunak, saying he has run “one of the worst election campaigns in living memory”:
We upset pensioners by making the cut to National Insurance over income tax, we upset mortgage payers because of the Liz Truss year… we upset young people with the idea of National Service which we then dropped halfway through the campaign.
We upset Remainers by being the party of Brexit in 2019. We upset Brexiteers this time around because we promised immigration would go down and it went up.
How do you cobble together a group of people who are going to vote for a party if you don’t have a coherent narrative of what the last 14 years is like if you’ve broken your promises, if you run probably one of the worst election campaigns in living memory, and if you have also lost your reputation for competency in Government?
The actual results will be released during the night as counts are completed around the country. It is expected that around two thirds of the results will be published between 3am and 5am.
A new Labour era dawns. God help us all.
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