UK 2015 - A New Dawn

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Note: Try not to take this TL too seriously


May 6th 2015

BBC News

Anti-UKIP rallies held across the country

On the final day of the general election campaign, around three million people are thought to have taken part in rallies opposing the UK Independence Party. Cities where rallies were held included Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool, Cardiff, Birmingham and London. The biggest of all took place in central London, where at least half a million marched - even more than in the previous major rally on Monday. Speakers there included the Prime Minister David Cameron, Deputy Prime Minister and Liberal Democrats leader Nick Clegg, Labour leader Ed Miliband, broadcaster Sir David Attenborough, Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson and the actress Dame Judi Dench. Meanwhile, marchers in Glasgow heard current First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and former First Minister Alex Salmond give passionate speeches urging a vote for the Scottish National Party in order to 'save Scotland from xenophobia'.

Mr. Farage spent the day campaigning in Buckingham, where he is hoping to topple the Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow. He dismissed the mass rallies as 'a rabble of left-wing extremists and cowardly establishment figures'.

UK Polling Report

Final polls suggest an unpredictable result

ICM: Con 23, Lab 26, UKIP 29, LD 11
YouGov: Con 22, Lab 28, UKIP 30, LD 10
Ipsos-MORI: Con 22, Lab 24, UKIP 33, LD 12
Survation: Con 19, Lab 28, UKIP 26, LD 15
Populus: Con 24, Lab 30, UKIP 22, LD 13
Ashcroft: Con 24, Lab 29, UKIP 25, LD 12
ComRes: Con 26, Lab 25, UKIP 28, LD 10

YouGov's leaders well/badly ratings are as follows: Cameron 32% well, 64% badly, Miliband - 35% well, 59% badly, Farage - 50% well, 41% badly, Clegg 31% well, 60% badly. YouGov's 'likelihood to vote' tracker shows 89% as being 10/10 certain to vote.

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May 7th 2015:

BBC One - 9:55PM

Opening titles roll





David Dimbleby: Hello and welcome to the BBC's election centre. Four minutes from now, when Big Ben strikes 10, we can legally reveal the contents of this, our exit poll. For now though our lips are sealed - tantalizing. This election must count as one of the most fascinating and unpredictable ever. At its outset it looked set to be a battle between the three main established parties. But then we witnessed that unbelievable televised debate in which UKIP's Nigel Farage apparently sweeped the others away. If the polls are to be believed, then they look set to, in the words of Mr. Farage himself, cause a political earthquake.

I course I can't do it all by myself, so we have an excellent team of experts, including our Political Editor Nick Robinson, YouGov's Peter Kellner, as well as Andrew Marr and Laura Kuenssberg. Jeremy Vine will have the challenging task of showing you a breakdown of the results with his magical graphics throughout the night, and Emily Maitlis will be bringing you raw figures on her touch screen. Andrew Neil will be interviewing the winners and the losers of this night up there on the balcony, and we have our top reporters at dozens of counts across the country, including those of the main party leaders.

And now, in just a moment we will be bringing you our exit poll. This is not an opinion poll, remember, as instead of asking voters how they would vote, we have asked them how they voted. We went to a key 140 polling stations to find this out, and we hope the voters have been telling us the truth...


And we are saying that Labour is the largest party.

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DD: So those figures are truly fascinating. What do you make of them Nick?

NR: Well, if, if these are correct, then this is a watershed election. UKIP's only MP prior to tonight was the by-election winner Douglas Carswell, and they have never won a seat in a general election. Nigel Farage will be in a state of shock and wonder, wonder as to what will happen next. So too will David Cameron and Ed Miliband, the former who, in these figures, has suffered a bad defeat. But look at the Liberal Democrats - eight seats. You'd have to go back nearly half a century to find the centre party at that level. Also, the SNP will be delighted if they take 30 of Scotland's 59 seats, as it is a bare majority of them. That would certainly exceed expectations - their own target throughout this campaign has been 20 seats. An effect of the UKIP surge in the rest of the United Kingdom? Who knows. But this still, still is only an exit poll. And they have been wrong before.

An hour later...

DD: Mr. Osborne, I have to interrupt you as Houghton and Sunderland South is about to declare.

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DD: Emily, tell us more.

EM: Well David, the outcome is of little surprise but the details are extraordinary. For UKIP to come within three thousand or so of taking this historically safe Labour seat is quite an achievement. All three of the main Westminster parties have taken a big hit in their percentages and the Greens have managed to beat the Lib Dems into fourth place. The swing from Labour to UKIP here was 21%, and the turnout has risen from 55% to 65%, suggesting that we are in for the highest turnout in decades.