London, Thanasis Gavos

They opened UK parliamentary election polls, where according to all the polls a change of the Downing Street baton is expected after 14 years, with a Labor victory for Sir Keir Starmer against his Conservatives Rishi Sunak.

Voting for about 46 million voters will end at 10pm local time. Immediately after, the major television networks (BBC, ITV, Sky News) will present a joint exit poll in collaboration with the Ipsos company.

The ballots from the polling stations will be taken to the counting centers in each of the 650 constituencies to count the ballots.

Results they are expected to start emerging for the first few seats almost an hour and a half later. There has traditionally been an informal “speed race” between Sunderland and Newcastle in NE England as to which region will declare the first winner, with Sunderland “winning” every election since 1992 except the last two (2017 and 2019). This year, however, Sunderland is expected to regain the informal title.

Anyway the bulk of the results are expected in the early hours of Friday (2-6am local time), with the almost final result coming before 9am of Friday. The crucial question of whether the first party will secure self-reliance is expected to be answered before 4am.

The electoral system in the United Kingdom is purely one-party, that is, whichever candidate gets the most votes tonight in each of the 650 constituencies becomes an MP. In order to achieve self-reliance a party must collect 326 seats.

In the event that self-reliance does not occurthe first party in parliamentary strength may seek scope for cooperation with smaller parties to form a government coalition (such as that of David Cameron in 2010 with the Liberal Democrats) or decide to form a minority government with support from smaller parties either permanently or in critical bills (such as Theresa May’s in 2017 with the DUP).

It is noted that today’s elections are taking place with significant border changes in 584 of the 650 electoral districts across the country. The change has been made so that there is a more equal distribution of population, ie about 72,000 voters per district.

According to the average of the latest polls, Labor maintains a 20% lead over the Conservatives in voting intention.