London
CNN
—
A seismic shift in British politics appears to have occurred after Britons ended 14 years of Conservative rule with a landslide victory for the Labour Party, a major exit poll has shown.
Labour’s projected victory is bigger than the party would have imagined until very recently, when the last general election in 2019 saw the party suffer its worst defeat in more than 80 years and usher in a long period of political darkness.
But the party has since been rebuilt under the leadership of Keir Starmer, who is now expected to become Britain’s next prime minister.
It could be a disastrous night for the Conservatives, with exit polls predicting the party will win its lowest number of seats in its history.
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Under the UK’s single-member constituency system, people in 650 constituencies across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland voted to elect the MPs who will represent them in Parliament. Votes will be counted from late Thursday night until Friday morning.
A party needs to win 326 seats to form a government, but Labour is expected to win 170 seats, giving it a supermajority in the next parliament.
The UK electoral system can lead to large discrepancies between the proportion of seats a party wins and the proportion of the popular vote it receives.
If support for one party, or antipathy towards another, is spread fairly evenly across the country, a party does not need to win a large percentage of the national vote to win a supermajority of seats in Parliament.
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Exit polls predicted Labour would win 410 seats and the Conservatives 131, suggesting one of the biggest swings in British political history.
Britain’s traditional third-largest party, the Liberal Democrats, also made a big leap forward, winning a projected 61 seats, up from just 11 in the 2019 general election.
The right-wing populist party Reform UK was predicted to win 13 seats, also well above most poll predictions.
Meanwhile in Scotland, the SNP is expected to lose several MPs, dropping to 10 seats from 48 in 2019.
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