Quick Guide: When will we know who has won the UK general election?
The UK general election starts tomorrow with polling stations opening at 7 am and closing at 10 pm.
After six weeks of campaigning for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer, tomorrow one of the two will be heading to No 10.
The exit poll, at 10 pm tomorrow, will give the PM and Starmer a snapshot of what to expect nationally before the results start to trickle in across the following hours.
Opinion polls have suggested the Conservative Party could face being wiped out at this election – with some predicting they are on track to win just 53 seats but other surveys suggest they could win around 150.
The polls are predicting Labour is set for a landslide and could achieve a bigger victory margin than Tony Blair in 1997.
The polls open at 7 am and close at 10 pm. You MUST have Photo ID to vote in the election.
What time is the UK exit poll?
The exit poll will be announced at 10 pm tomorrow – the same time voting ends and polling stations close.
The exit poll – an opinion poll of people leaving a polling station, asking how they voted – gives an insight into how the election might unfold. It has a track record of being accurate.
Why does the exit poll matter?
The exit poll is a survey of voters taken from about 150 constituencies in England, Scotland and Wales which gives a strong indication of the likely result.
People at each station are approached at random and handed a replica ballot. The voter then privately fills in the ballot to indicate how they voted and puts it into a box.
The forecasts made for each constituency are also influenced by what is known about people who live there, for example how they voted in the 2016 EU referendum.
When will election results be announced?
Most of the constituency results are expected in the early hours of Friday morning, as hundreds are announced across the country, with the final seats projected to announce their winning candidates by 7 am.
When will we know who won?
Around an hour or so after the exit poll at 10 pm, results from the election will begin to trickle in, with the first declaration expected to be the new constituency of Blyth and Ashington at 11:30 pm.
By 3 am on Friday, the results will start coming in really quickly. It’s the most important part of the night, as results are expected from more than two-thirds of constituencies by 5 am.
It should be clear who has won not long after this point, but leaders will have to wait until one party receives enough votes for a majority under the first-past-the-post electoral system before it can be called officially.
By 7 am almost all the remaining seats will have declared and the country could be waking up to news of a new government in Westminster.
Regardless of the results, at this point the party leaders will be preparing to address the nation and political commentators will begin an election debrief that is sure to continue for days.
When was the 2019 election result called?
Boris Johnson won a landslide victory for the Tories in 2019. The first exit poll came back at 10 pm, while Johnson’s overall majority was confirmed at 5 am.
By 7 am, it became clear the Tories were on course for their biggest majority at Westminster since that of Margaret Thatcher.