Labour win 2024 General Election with majority government, predicts exit poll
Some six weeks after Rishi Sunak stepped out into the rain and announced that he was calling the general election, Brits have cast their votes and the results will soon be coming in.
While we'll have to wait and see exactly what the results are, for now the best guess we've got is down to the exit poll.
When Sunak was soaked outside Downing Street, many thought he was announcing the end of his own government and that the election results would bring an end to Conservative dominance in Westminster.
If the exit poll is accurate then those portents of doom for Sunak and the Tories appear to have been well founded, as this time around those results point towards Labour returning to power with a majority government for the first time in over 14 years.
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The exit poll is predicting a Labour majority of 170 with the party getting 410 seats.
It's bad news for the Conservatives, who are predicted to drop to 131 seats but are still some distance clear of the Liberal Democrats on 61 seats, while Reform are predicted to win 13 seats.
If the exit poll is correct and Labour gets a majority in government then it's promised to lower the voting age to 16, create a new public energy company and enact major reform to the UK's planning system.
Of course, it doesn't do to count one's chickens before they've hatched and there have been exit polls in the past where the result hasn't quite matched the prediction.
We'll let you know what the confirmed result is when it comes tomorrow (5 July).
What is an exit poll?
It's the final attempt to predict the results of the general election before constituencies begin declaring, and essentially prepares people staying up to keep track of the results for what to expect.
Normally published shortly after the polling stations close at 10pm on election night, the results point us in the direction of the country's political fate and what the next government will be like.
First introduced into the 1970 general election, where it correctly predicted a Conservative majority, the exit poll has been part of British elections ever since.
How do they get the data?
Polling company Ipsos Mori sends staff to selected constituencies which are meant to provide a good representation of the UK at large and show what might be happening in marginal areas.
At the last election they polled voters at 144 constituencies across England, Scotland and Wales to get the results.
From here they ask a portion of the people voting to fill out that second ballot, which is not an actual vote but one that'll be tallied by the pollsters to generate the exit poll results.
Is the exit poll accurate?
The short answer is 'not always'.
The long answer is that normally the exit poll gets quite close to the election result, at the last election it predicted a Conservative majority of 86 seats, not far off the 80 seat majority they did get.
In 2017 it was correct that the Tories would be the largest party, but the exit poll didn't call the hung parliament that resulted.
Meanwhile, in 2015 it was closer to the actual result than opinion polling at the time but didn't predict the Tory majority that followed.
Exit polls have dropped some clangers over the years, such as in 1992 when a hung parliament was predicted but the actual result was a Conservative majority.
Basically, the exit poll usually gives you a good idea of what to expect from the result but it does occasionally make a misstep.
Joe Harker