The votes are in—after what’s been called Britain's most exciting prime-minister election in decades. But who will win the race? Early exit polls show a hung parliament, with the Tories in the lead. WATCH live coverage of the results.
The first British exit polls are in: A BBC/ITN/Sky poll predicts a hung parliament with the Tories as the largest party. According to their numbers, the Tories will pick up 305 seats, Labour will drop to 255, and the Liberal Dems will have 61 seats. That represents a 97-seat gain for the Tories, but they'll still be 21 seats short of the 326 they need for a majority. Reports of hundreds, if not thousands, of voters being turned away at the polls have been surfacing due to long lines, voter lists not being properly updated, and a shortage of ballots. Election officials are looking into what left voters unable to place their ballots. The Labour Party has won the first seat of the night, with 19,137 votes over Conservative candidate Robert Oliver in Houghton and Sunderland South. And though Gordon Brown may not be back as Britain’s Prime Minister, he is safely back as an MP for Parliament. In his victory speech he said there is “no greater privilege than to serve in parliament the people you have grown up with.” Some are speculating that Brown may try to form a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats to keep the Labour Party in partial power.
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