said after being reelected to her seat in Maidenhead near London.

May was facing questions over her judgment in calling the election three years early and risking her party’s slim but stable majority of 17.

If the exit poll outcome was confirmed, the result would lead to a period of political uncertainty and could throw Britain’s negotiations to leave the European Union into disarray. The pound lost more than 2 cents against the dollar within seconds of the announcement.

As results trickled in from hand counts of ballots, all parties urged caution in reading too much into the exit poll. During the last election, in 2015, the Conservatives did better than the exit poll predicted. Conducted for a consortium of UK broadcasters by interviewing voters leaving polling stations, it is regardedas a directional, but not exact, indicator of the result.

Britain’s main opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn leaves a polling station after casting his vote in north London on June 8, 2017, as Britain holds a general election. (Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP)

Sky News projections gave the Conservatives 315-325 seats, while the BBC forecast predicted May’s party would receive 316 seats to Labour’s 267.

Early Friday, British ex-deputy prime minister Nick Clegg lost his seat in parliament, the biggest figure to fall so far in Britain’s surprising election.

Clegg led the Liberal Democrat party through five years of coalition government with the Conservatives until 2015. He lost his Sheffield Hallam seat in northern England to the Labour Party early Friday.

The centrist, pro-EU Liberal Democrats had hoped to make big gains in the election