UK Election Results- Based On Exit Polls BBC Predicts Hung Parliament With Conservatives Getting Most Seats UPDATE: Exit Poll Not Looking Good, Underestimating Conservative Vote?

BBC streaming video here (thanks to Slu for the heads up). CSPAN 3 is also running the BBC coverage.

Not sure who I'm rooting for really. I think if Cameron wins, it will be like if McCain won in '08. The political spectrum in the UK will run from left to lefter, no real distinctions.

Polls close in a minute at 5pm eastern.

More about the exit polls...according to the commentators it's based on a national model. I'm not an expert of the regions of the UK but I know enough to know there are a lot of regional differences and one size fits all is going to have a hefty margin of error.

Winning the most seats doesn't mean that Cameron gets the first shot to form a government. If Labour can get the LibDems to support Brown, he stays PM. That seems unlikely but it'll be a mess.

Labour strategist crowing about what a great accomplishment a hung parliament is for them. Probably more lucky Cameron crashed from his earlier lead.

I really don't like the parliamentary systems.

Nick Clegg, the LibDem leader, is going to be a very popular guy soon. One of his big things is election reform, especially getting rid of the 'first past the pole' system and getting proportional representation. I wonder if he'll go with whichever party gives him that in return for staying in power for a defined term, then he bails and forces new elections.

It might work well for Conservatives if that happened. They would dump Cameron, elect a more Thostaerite Conservative leader and then contest the next election by offering a clear choice between the parties.

"The Swing"- They keep talking about 'the swing' in votes. The Labour Party has won the first two seats. That's not a surprise, they are like Kucinich and Barney Frank's seats have come in for Democrats (two very safe seats) but what they are looking at is the change in vote percentages from the previous result. The hung parliament prediction is based on like a 5% swing from Labor to Conservative over the country. Well, two very safe Labour seats are showing almost 10% swings to the Conservatives.

Looks like the exit poll might be off bu still early days as they say across the pond.

posted by DrewM. at 05:01 PM

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