Labour is on course for a huge victory in the British election

WITH VOTING now over in Britain, widespread predictions of an electoral earthquake appear to have been right. According to an exit poll conducted for the country’s main broadcasters, published at 10pm BST, the Labour Party is on track to win a historic landslide victory, taking back swathes of seats in the Midlands, the north of England and Scotland. The poll suggests that the party will win 410 out of 650 seats in the House of Commons. That would give Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, a thumping majority of 170, just shy of the landslide won by Sir Tony Blair in 1997.

Unless the exit poll is badly wrong, a low-key campaign will have produced an extraordinary result. Just five years ago voters handed Labour its worst defeat in almost a century; as things stand it is on course for one of its greatest victories. That change does not reflect any great groundswell of optimism. Instead voters have ruthlessly punished the Conservatives for governing chaotically; they are projected to win just 131 seats, their worst result in the modern democratic era.

If it comes to pass, this seismic result will reflect Britain’s winner-takes-all electoral system. Labour’s final vote share is likely to be similar to the 40% it secured under Jeremy Corbyn in 2017. In that election it won just 262 seats; this time round the party’s voters are spread much more efficiently. A surge in support for smaller parties has meanwhile helped to take scores of seats off the Tories. The exit poll puts the Liberal Democrats on track to win 61 seats, its second-best ever result. Reform UK is projected to win 13 seats—a stunning result for the upstart immigration-sceptic party. Meanwhile the Scottish National Party, which has dominated the past three general elections north of the border, is projected to collapse to just ten seats.

Exit polls—which involve fieldworkers asking voters at polling stations to complete mock ballot papers—are not perfect. In October 1974 the 10pm poll projected a big majority for Labour; in the end it was just three. In 1992 it failed to predict a Tory victory. But as statistical methods have improved they have earned a reputation for accuracy: at the past seven elections they have predicted the eventual result to within a handful of seats. According to Sir John Curtice, an election guru who is leading the process, recent exit polls have often proved more accurate than opinion polls. On the other hand, this year’s election is particularly hard to predict, because so many seats are on a knife edge.

The coming hours will show just how accurate the exit poll is. Actual results will begin to trickle in from around 11.30pm BST, with constituencies in north-east England likely to be the quickest to complete their counts. The pace of declarations will pick up at around 2am, along with the likelihood of some big-name Tory casualties. By around 4am results should be in from around half of the seats. Both Rishi Sunak, the current prime minister, and Sir Keir are expected to make speeches at their constituency counts at around that time, by when it will be clear whether or not the exit poll is broadly accurate.

You can follow all the action on The Economist’s dedicated results page. An updated digital version of the weekly edition will be available on The Economist app on the morning of July 5th, and at 1pm BST subscribers can join our online event to hear reactions from our Britain team. ■