I'm also very intrigued by the boundary changes. On the BBC website they show what the results for the 2005 election mould likely have been with the new 2010 borders, and it seems that the changes favour Labour by a very significant and quite possibly decisive amount... which really goes to show how badly rigged the FPTP system is.

If somewhere like Iraq had such a system, I imagine there would be international outcries of injustice against democracy.

It would also appear that my notion of how "posh" a place is coincides with how they vote. Labour<Tory<LibDem - which surprised me rather. I'd have thought posh people would have voted Tory, and normal nice people like me would vote Lib. Perhaps it's my regional preconceptions that are wrong. I always thought Bath was about the poshest place anywhere

Blue currently 100,000 votes ahead, despite being 10 seats behind.

I'll keep up the late night posts given my obvious advantage. (It's 1.30pm here)

At time of writing the Tories are 40 seats ahead. I must say I'm surprised at the exit polls but as others have suggested, these aren't always accurate.

Can someone please explain to me the most likely outcome (or outcomes) if no-one reaches the magic number, if you need to PM this to me to keep your opinion unbias it'd be most appreciated!

There hasn't been much coverage on the news here so far, but I suspect there will be when I get home this evening.

It does show that there needs to be electoral reform. The Libs have increased their share of the vote yet lost seats.

Do you think that Jeremy Vine is doing an amazing Peter Snow impression?

Interesting. No winner.

I notice that many spineless voters have all of a sudden forgiven many MPs involved in the expenses scandal.

Hey ho.

So, the constitution states that the sitting PM has first dibs on forming a coalition, even a coalition doesn't look like being a majority. I think it would be bad for anybody to try and run with a minority Government, rallying support for every issue is not something we need at the moment.

I don't think a rash coalition or Cameron trying to form a minority Government would be of any use to the UK in the current climate. Hopefully this random result will kick them all up their backsides, they need to take time and work out what to do. Collectively.

I agree with Amnesia, whatever happens we need reform and we also need to know why people were turned away from voting. The turnout didn't increase that much at all.

Still no clear picture.

Nobody should worry though. During the economic crisis the times the markets and the UK performed at its best was when all the MPs were on holiday so a hung Parliament is nothing to worry about.

Unless electoral reform includes the west Lothian question etc then no. Labour only decided that reform was worth looking at when it became obvious that it would extremly unlikely that they would win.

another rant thing.. About the people claiming they couldnt vote because there were queues.. ahh didums.

You had 13 bleeding hours to vote. The elction date was AFAIK <sarcasm> signed for all to see over the last few weeks and there was always the option to get a postal vote.
If you are leaving it so close well dont be suprised if you cant get to vote.


but on a bonus Jaqui Smith lost her seat

At some polling stations, people who were there at 5:30 didn't get to vote. That's hardly leaving it until the last minute.

There have been a number of other absolute [LIFTED] that you wouldn't even expect in sub-saharan Africa.

The really odd one is the polling station that split everyone into two queues, residents and students, and then gave considerably more booths to the residents. Cannot see the returning officer coming out of that one well.

you mean they turned up at 5.30 saw a queue then went away. Somehow I cant see that there was a queue long enough at 5.30 not to have been dealt with by 10.00, not without it being on every news channel.

Like Jon said, many people were in the queue for hours.

In other places voters turned up in the afternoon and saw long queues so went back later, queued for an hour or two and still couldn't get in.

There also wasn't any consistency between Returning Officers. The only one who had sense was in Birmingham where they got everybody inside and then locked the doors. They still had to wait but they were still able to vote.

Edit: It has been on every news channel BTW. I saw one place where they only had 2 people dealing with all the voters. 2!

When I voted it took all three of the officers to find me on the roll and hand out the cards. Luckily I was the only voter at the station at 16:30 and had 8 booths to choose from. Not sure what it would have been like after normal work hours though.

Bath has a stupid amount of student and lecturers ect. It's no country bumpkins!

Perhaps it's time to look at alternative methods of voting.

Why can't we vote on the internet, or by mobile phone, as well as by putting a mark on a bit of paper?

Personally, I think 15hrs is a plenty large enough window to vote in, when postal-voting is such an easily accessible option.

I was initially more concerned that Lewisham Deptford had remained open until 22:30 than I was about people being turned away at 22:00, but if all voters had been issued with ballot papers and 'locked in' then this seems to comply with legislation. I'm not sure that in this day and age, with access to things such as exit polls so readily available on portable devices, this rule is suitable, but I am reasonably convinced it was fair. If, however, these reports turn out to be true, then something seriously is wrong with how some of the polls were conducted.

It also seems to me, that the system needs to be developed to allow for a polling station to scale horizontally. The single register per polling station is a definite failing point at present, and prevents parallelism at peak times, which you presume could be fairly easily anticipated.