To comply with election rules, Channel 4 News will not be updating the live blog today until the polling booths close.
We’ll be back at 10pm, bringing you live results and analysis through the night.
For the rest of the day’s news, head to our main site. Channel 4 News will be live, as usual, at 7pm.
And don’t miss Channel 4’s Alternative Election Night from 9pm – here’s the trailer:
As their nations gulped down their cornflakes and headed out to vote man’t best friends accompanied them and started the most popular internet trend of the election so far (apart from various efforts at eating bacon sandwiches and that odd Milifandom episode).
It started with a wave of users on Twitter asking if you can take your dog to a polling station – you can, on a lead but it’s better they stay outside in case they cause a disruption. We actually provided this useful public service announcement yesterday.
And it ended with thousands of voters sharing their snaps of loyal pooches waiting for their owners to do their democratic duty.
https://twitter.com/Lucie_T_xox/status/596398343141662720
Some tunes from our economics editor to get you into the groove.
Switch on the telly or watch online now.
BREAKING: ITV/Sky/BBC #GE2015 Exit Poll – CON 316 LAB 239 LD 10 SNP 58
Although the Lib Dems, in this poll are completely wiped out, likely by their Conservative partners.
Still, despite this, significantly with the Lib Dems according to this poll the Tories and Lib Dems could form a second coalition, reaching those crucial 323 seats.
Exit polls are pulled together by asking people how they have voted, rather than previous polls throughout the campaign when they are asked how they will vote.
People have been dispatched to 140 polling stations around the UK, stations thought to be representative of the constituency they’re in.
A specific number, say every 10th, is asked how they have voted as they leave and these votes are collated by five people in a room. Literally.
Last time around people poured cold water on the exit polls but they were very accurate.
Experts warn that the headlines may be very circumspect, which basically means: ‘Who knows?’- because the polls so far have been seriously close.
As Gary Gibbons, political editor, puts it: “They are fantastically accurate… except for the couple of times when they are very wrong.”
Alex Thomson explains that the polling shows that the SNP will seize 58 of the 59 seats in Scotland.
He points out that means that there is one seat that will go to someone who is not in Nicola Sturgeon’s party. But who will it be? A Tory? A Lib Dem? Labour?
Paddy Ashdown says: “If these exit polls are right I’ll publicly eat my hat. I bet you my hat, eaten on the BBC, they are wrong”.
Michael Gove says: “I believe the exit poll is right and if it’s right the Conservatives have won this election”. Labour’s Harriet Harman says exit polls have been wrong in the past.
The bookies tend to be more accurate than the polls. People put their money where there vote is. There has been a massive shift in betting following exit poll – David Cameron 1/50 from 4/5 to be PM on July 1st.
I’d treat the exit poll with HUGE caution. I’m hoping for a good night but I think 58 seats is unlikely! #GE15
Exit polls have been massively wrong in the past of course – but they do have a habit if being rather close to right rather a lot of the time.
The first results of the night is in, it’s a Labour hold.
Houghton Sunderland South it’s a Labour hold for Bridget Phillipson, with Ukip in second place and Lib Dems in 5th with just 791 votes.
Meanwhile a Labour source said of the exit poll: “We are sceptical of the BBC poll. It looks wrong to us.”
Ukip deputy leader Paul Nuttall expressed severe doubts over the accuracy of the exit poll, and said the party was “buoyant and confident” that it would win more than two seats.
The exit poll leaves them with just two – Nigel Farage will be hoping one of them is his.
“The feeling that we are getting on the ground is that it’s pretty tight between the Conservatives and Labour,”
Labour people are stunned by the BBC exit poll, and saying it does not tally with their experience in the key marginals they are fighting. After the shock of seeing it, I think many of them would accept the rival, YouGov one.
It’s early days. The BBC poll, if correct, tells a story of widespread switching from UKIP to the Conservatives, and from Lib Dem to the Conservatives, in both cases probably driven by a desire to ensure a majority government to keep the SNP out of influencing a Labour-led coalition.
That is plausible – but if correct it will reflect one of the first mass tactical votes in UK history. It’s been clearly helped by calls from the right-wing press but my sense right now is that, while it might be right tendentially, it would be truly mould-breaking if it was correct.
What it would mean is that (a) the SNP have destroyed everybody else in Scotland and (b) in fear of that a lot of centrist English voters have voted tactically for the Tories in response.
That would not just put Scotland on an exit path from the UK. It would put – again I stress if correct – the Conservatives in a position to govern with the DUP and the two projected UKIP members. That is, it would harden Euroscepticism and social conservatism in government.
On top of that it will create a new dynamic in Wales. Welsh Labour will have to come up with a new story to tell people in the principality if the BBC-version comes to pass: it basically means Labour has no future chance of winning a majority in Westminster as long as Scotland is the driving issue of Westminster elections.
But, as I say, we have to be hugely skeptical of a poll so at odds with all the other opinion polls, and indeed at odds with a perfectly respectable YouGov one.
Darshna Soni is in Sheffield Hallam bringing us the latest reaction after that shocking Exit Poll showed the Lib Dems could be wiped to just ten seats. A terrible result for the party.
On the face of it, it seems very unlikely. Mr Clegg won the highest majority of any Liberal Democrat in 2010, well over 15,000. He was elected at the height of Cleggmania and for many, represented a new kind of politics.
He was so popular that it caused huge problems at some polling stations here. I remember interviewing dozens of disappointed voters who didn’t get to cast their ballot, because the queues were so big the stations just couldn’t cope. Sheffield’s returning officer waived his £20,000 fee as a result.
Who can forget the catchphrase, “I agree with Nick,” popularised after the debates of that election. Some people here tell me they still have the t-shirts that were printed with the logo.
And yet, what a difference five years in government makes. The Lib Dems may have paid a very heavy price for being in Coalition with the Tories. If the exit polls are to be believed (and Paddy Ashdown has said he’ll publicly eat his hat if they are right) the party could be facing astonishing losses.
Here in Sheffield Hallam, a number of polls put Labour ahead, which seemed to galvanise their candidate Oliver Coppard. He faced a tough battle. Not only did Nick Clegg have that massive majority, but also this seat has never before elected a Labour MP (before the Lib Dems got in, it was always Tory).
That’s why, if Nick Clegg does lose his seat, it will be the biggest shock of #GE2015. A moment worth staying up for…
Matt Frei is reporting from David Cameron’s constituency in Witney. He says that David Cameron’s advisors are not quite sure how to take the exit poll.
He says he sent a Cameron advisor a text message with a simple question mark. He got ten exclamation marks in response.
We’ll get Witney at 4.30am.
Tony Blair’s former director of communications Alastair Campbell said the exit poll was “certainly not what we were hoping for or expecting”.
Mr Campbell told the BBC: “I have to say it just doesn’t feel right . I think there is a lot of scepticism about the poll. If this poll is right, there is going to have to be a pretty big look at the polling industry.”
He added: “David Cameron set out to win a majority. It looks like he hasn’t. I don’t know what he is going to do in relation to the Liberal Democrats.”
Conservative sources say that Mr Cameron is “Pleased with poll”. “Let’s see. It’s encouraging but early days”, they say.
They have also hinted at hoped for success in the South West, nabbing seats of coalition partners the Lib Dems. “South west always very important to us”, the source said.
The Prime Minister had a meal with Sam and advisors of beef pie and salad and will stay up to watch results – we expect Witney at 5.30am – and he’ll then go back to London after the count to sleep for a bit.
This could be brutal for the Lib Dems, there is a Twitter account that is follow each deposit they lose. So far it’s £1500.
Washington and Sunderland West constituency result:
LAB 55.0% (+2.4)
UKIP 19.7% (+16.3)
CON 18.9% (-3.0)
LDEM 2.7% (-14.4)
GRN 2.9% (+2.9)
Massive crushing for Lib Dems there, and big boost for Ukip.
Labour’s shadow chancellor Ed Balls told the BBC: “Even if the exit poll is right, that means the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition majority has gone from 72 to zero – David Cameron’s ability to hang on in Downing Street is on a knife-edge and he will have to reach out to get support from the Ulster unionists.
“If the exit poll is wrong just by 10 seats – and all the information is that there are very close fights between Labour and Conservatives in seats right across the country – then suddenly David Cameron won’t be able to get a majority in the House of Commons and it will fall to Ed Miliband as leader of the Opposition to then put a Queen’s Speech before Parliament.”
Mr Balls added: “I hope our result is going to be a lot better than that. It’s really in question whether David Cameron will be able to hang on as Prime Minister when he has been set back in this way.
“He said success for him was a majority. Even on the exit poll, he’s not going to get that.”
If the exit poll is right the Tories will have lost something like only 10 seats or so to Labour. And as the results come in we may find they may have pinched some off Labour.
If these figures are right a lot of things may follow.
The Ed Miliband experiment to tap into a more radical spirit in British voters has flopped. If it was there, he didn’t galvanise it. Many Blairites will be saying “I told you so” if they can scrape themselves off the floor to muster the energy.
One thing the Labour leadership could say is “I told you so” to the Scottish electorate. Scottish Labour warned its former voters that a vote for the SNP would let the Tories in. As they attempt to rebuild their party in Scotland (perhaps under a banner completely separate from the UK mothership party) it wouldn’t do them much good to kick off with a wagging of the finger to the deserting voters.
Ed Balls said: “All of the votes are in the box, they have been cast today, the turnout is high and we are going to wait and see how its counted.
“For eight years, I have been fighting a constituency where the majority is much tighter. We fought very hard in 2010, people predicted I might lose and we won by 1,000.
He added: “Today, the mood on the doorstep has been really good, very strong, lots of people saying they are worried about the health service, jobs for young people, and urging Labour to win.
“We have fought a great campaign in Morley and Outwood but the people have decided, their votes are in the ballot box, it’s not something I decide.”
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