Labour triumphs in UK elections, Conservatives face historic defeat
The elections to the House of Commons in the United Kingdom have concluded. According to the exit poll, the opposition Labour Party won, securing 410 seats in the 650-member House.
The opposition Labour Party decisively won Thursday's elections to the UK House of Commons. According to the exit poll, Labour will have 410 seats in the 650-member lower house of parliament, slightly less than the pre-election forecasts.
An absolute majority for the Labour Party means that on Friday, its leader, Keir Starmer, will be received by King Charles III, who will entrust him with forming a new government. Labour has remained in opposition since losing the elections in May 2010.
"The Labour leader has secured the 326 seats required for a majority in the House of Commons - putting an end to 14 years of Conservative rule," reports Sky News.
Defeat of the Conservative Party
The Conservative Party, which has been ruling the United Kingdom for 14 years, appears to have suffered a heavy defeat in Thursday's elections to the House of Commons. According to the exit poll, Conservatives will have only 131 seats in the 650-member House of Commons, matching their worst result in history.
However, this is not as bad a result as the latest pre-election polls predicted, which indicated that the Conservatives might lose below 100 seats or that they would have fewer seats than the Liberal Democrats.
Nevertheless, the Conservative Party lost almost two-thirds of its previously held seats. In the last election, in December 2019, the Conservatives won 365 seats, though, at the end of the House of Commons term, their parliamentary group numbered 344 members. The worst elections for the Conservative Party, in terms of the number of seats won, were those of 1906, when they secured 131 seats out of a possible 670.
British elections
Over 46 million citizens were eligible to vote, having registered to participate in the elections. They voted in approximately 40,000 polling stations to elect 650 members of the House of Commons. A total of 4,515 candidates ran for seats, the highest number in history; 459 ran as independent candidates, while the rest represented 98 political parties, also a record.
Exit poll results were announced immediately after the polling stations closed. In the previous five elections, the average difference between the seats predicted in the exit poll and the final seats for each party ranged between 1.5 and 7.5.
Full results from individual constituencies will come in overnight as votes are counted. All results should be known later on Friday.
