In 2010 for example, the BBC made a big fanfare of playing Big Ben strike ten as they put out the poll.
Lol.
And when can be official results?
From what I know, every constituency declares their own result at some point after 10pm local time. There are constituencies which take until tomorrow morning or noon to declare, so a UK-wide result should be known tomorrow at some point.
This is correct. The first results will almost certainly be from the Sunderland constituencies, perhaps an hour or so after the polls close. Most others will declare some time between about 1am and 6am local time. A handful will wait until tomorrow to count, and some very close results may also declare very late. IIRC in 1997 Winchester (where the majority was 2) didn't declare until mid afternoon on the Friday (and of course the result was later declared void and there was a by-election, which, um, wasn't quite as close...).
Ahhh.
That's why I love the Austrian way of elections: Polls are open from 6am to 5pm on Sunday. Vote counting takes 2 hours. Pundits analyse the results until 10pm. Everyone goes to sleep.
Is election day a national holiday?
