UK General Election - May 7th 2015 (The Official Election Day & Results Thread)

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Why Bristish elections are always so boring?

Boring? Boring? Live declarations? Swingometers? Seeing big politicians eat humble pie on national TV? Not boring at all.

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Even if the exit poll is wrong, it can't be that wrong. Cameron lives.

It can be that wrong; Oct 1974 is a classic example.

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Yep... should got a lot more soon though.

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If the exit poll is right - and it's a massive if - every pollster in the country is going to have a lot of explaining to do.

What I want is some actual marginal results...

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Slightly unusual yes...

Labour's current projected performance isn't good enough and if borne out in the results, Ed Miliband needs to go.

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We still have 633 seats to declare, but I'm not optimistic.

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I'll stay up until the next official forecast... and if that's no real change, I'll go to bed.

David Blunkett thinks the exit polls are right and the polls were wrong... in fact that the polls drove people to the Conservatives.

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Sylvia Hermon has held Down North.

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Well, the only consolation I can take from that one is that we increased our national vote share and Galloway lost.

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If the Tories get a majority then it puts to bed braying at the SNP for making it happen. If Labour held every seat in Scotland it lost to the SNP it wouldn't have made a blind bit of difference.

If the SNP hadn't been polling as well as they did, I suspect a good number of floating voters in England might have gone to Labour.

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Where now for UKIP I wonder?

Did very well in the NE of England; if they pick the right successor to Farage and Labour doesn't win back the white working class, then they could make a good number of gains in 2020.

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Miliband making his resignation speech now.

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I don't know much about Ian Murray, but the fact that he held on against the tide has to be a plus....

No, just no. The Scottish Labour leader ought to be a MSP sitting in Edinburgh, not an MP sitting in London.

Yes, as there's now only one more non-SNP MP in Scotland than there are pandas...

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Is this the most dissapointing/crushing election night in the history of the Labour Party?

Can't be far from it. Of course, 1970 and 1992 are also good candidates (strange how often the pollsters strongly overestimate Labour's chances). 1983 was terrible of course, but so expected that it can't have felt anywhere near this bad.

No, 1992 (in my memory at least). Really this election result was very predictable, we just allowed ourselves to be kidded by the polls that perhaps Miliband and Balls weren't as unpopular as we all knew they really were, and that losing Scotland didn't matter because the SNP are left-wing anyway. All a big house of cards and the cold light of day reveals these beliefs to be the fallacy we secretly knew all along. But a new leader, a miserable Tory government run by the 60 or so far right in their ranks, and a big win in 5 years beckons

I personally attribute it to the economy. If I ask myself the question "Am I better off than I was five years ago?" I have to answer in the affirmative.

If Labour couldn't beat Thatcher with 3 million out of work... they certainly couldn't beat Cameron with 1.9.

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Did Labour or the Tories lose their deposit in any places?

Labour lost at least one in Scotland (Aberdeenshire West & Kincardine) and possibly lost some others.