Democratic Unionist Party leader Peter Robinson, center, celebrates with his general election candidates Nigel Dodds, left, Gavin Robinson, 2nd right, and Jeffrey Donaldson, front right, after they were... (Associated Press) 
 
 LONDON (AP) — 12:20 p.m. (1120 GMT; 7:20 a.m. EDT) 
 
 Ed Miliband, the leader of Britain's Labour Party, says he will step down after a worse-than-expected result in the election. 
 
 The party lost dozens of seats to the separatist Scottish National Party, which took almost all of the 59 seats in Scotland. 
 
 Speaking to party members who cheered in support, Miliband said Friday he wanted to resign straight away so that the party can rebuild itself. 
 
 With 641 of 650 seats counted, Labour has 229 seats, finishing well below the 258 seats secured five years ago by former leader and ex-Prime Minister Gordon Brown. 
 
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 11:45 a.m. (1045 GMT; 6:45 a.m. EDT) 
 
 Nick Clegg has resigned as leader of Britain's Liberal Democrats after a disastrous result for his party in the election. 
 
 Clegg said he must take responsibility for the party's losses, which he described as much more crushing that he expected. 
 
 The Liberal Democrats, the Conservatives' junior coalition partner, lost most of the seats they held in Parliament. Many of their most senior and experienced politicians lost their seats. 
 
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 11:40 a.m. (1040 GMT; 6:40 a.m. EDT) 
 
 Nigel Farage has resigned as leader of the populist U.K. Independence Party after failed to win a seat in the U.K. parliamentary election. 
 
 Farage, who had earlier promised to resign if he lost, told activists "I'm a man of my word." 
 
 But he raised the prospect he would consider running again in the future. 
 
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 11:30 a.m. (1030 GMT; 6:30 a.m. EDT) 
 
 British Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservatives have secured enough seats to form a majority government. 
 
 Results from Thursday's election show that the Conservatives won at least 324 of the House of Commons' 650 seats, enough to form a slim majority government. 
 
 The Conservatives are ahead of their main rival, the Labour Party, which lost dozens of seats to the separatist Scottish National Party. 
 
 The win makes Cameron the first Conservative prime minister to win a second term since Margaret Thatcher. 
 
 Cameron stopped just short of declaring overall victory earlier Friday, saying he hoped to govern "one nation, one United Kingdom" if he was fortunate enough to continue as prime minister. 
 
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 10:40 a.m. (0940 GMT; 5:40 a.m. EDT) 
 
 The United Kingdom Independence Party leader, Nigel Farage, has lost his bid to win a seat in Parliament and could resign despite his right-wing party's surge to third in the popular vote nationwide. 
 
 Farage finished second to Conservative Party candidate Craig Mackinlay, a former UKIP activist, in the South Thanet constituency east of London as results were announced Friday. 
 
 Before the result, Farage had pledged to quit as UKIP leader if he failed to win the seat. He decried the British electoral system's use of winner-takes-all constituencies. UKIP received nearly 3.8 million votes, but finished second or third in dozens of districts. 
 
 Farage said before the result: "The system is bust. You've got a first-past-the-post system where we clearly become the third party in Britain but get hardly any seats." 
 
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 9:25 a.m. (0825 GMT; 4:25 a.m. EDT) 
 
 With Prime Minister David Cameron on the brink of a majority for another five years of Conservative government in the U.K, markets seemed buoyed by prospect of avoiding weeks of political wrangling for power. 
 
 Mark Dampier, head of investment research at Hargreaves Lansdown stockbrokers, says that "business as usual might be the order of the day from this election result. 
 
 But markets are likely to be concerned over the next two years about the prospect of a referendum on whether or not to leave the European Union. 
 
 HSBC economists Simon Wells and Liz Martins say a referendum on EU membership by end-2017 now seems much more likely. 
 
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 8:55 a.m. (0755 GMT; 3:55 a.m. EDT) 
 
 Prime Minister David Cameron's office says he is going to Buckingham Palace later Friday to see Queen Elizabeth II. 
 
 Downing Street says that will take place at 12:30p.m. (1130 GMT). 
 
 He is expected to tell her that he has enough support in Parliament to form a government. 
 
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 8:45 a.m. (0745 GMT; 3:45 a.m. EDT) 
 
 Another big Labour figure has fallen in U.K. national elections, as the party's Treasury spokesman, Ed Balls, lost his seat in northern England to the Conservatives by 422 votes. 
 
 Had Labour won, Balls would have been finance minister. 
 
 He said that "any personal disappointment I have at this result is as nothing as compared to the sense of sorrow I have at the result Labour has achieved ... and the sense of concern I have about the future." 
 
 Balls said Britain faces "five years where questions will arise about the future of our union, about whether we can stay as a member of the European Union and fight for jobs and investment, whether we can make sure we secure our National Health Service at a time when public spending is cut." 
 
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 8:35 a.m. (0735 GMT; 3:35 a.m. EDT) 
 
 British voters are reacting with surprise as they wake to the news that Prime Minister David Cameron may headed toward a Parliamentary majority. Polls have been showing a virtual dead heat in the race, and many expected weeks of wrangling over who would be in power. 
 
 Account manager Nicky Kelly-Lord, 38, is among those startled by the result. "I thought it would be closer," she says. 
 
 But some, like project manager Jonathan Heeley, 42, thought of it as inevitable that a country dealing with the wake of the 2008 financial crisis would be anxious to keep the economic recovery going. Heeley says, "the country's rebuilding itself and people want to stay with that, that's my opinion." 
 
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 7:55 a.m. (0655 GMT, 2:55 a.m. EDT) 
 
 All night, famous political faces and household names in Britain had to stand on stages at vote counting centers to hear they had lost their seats in Parliament. 
 
 Douglas Alexander, who directed the opposition Labour's campaign and would have been Britain's foreign secretary if they had won, was defeated by a 20-year-old student from the Scottish National Party. 
 
 The Liberal Democrats suffered the worst, as almost their entire top team — many of them government ministers — was felled. Casualties included Business Secretary Vince Cable, chief secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander, Energy Secretary Ed Davey and high-profile lawmakers Lynne Featherstone and Simon Hughes. 
 
 "This has been a terrible night for our party all over," Cable said. "But I am absolutely sure that we are going to bounce back." 
 
 Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg kept his own seat but was meeting with colleagues Friday to figure out whether he will resign. 
 
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 7:45 a.m. (0645 GMT, 2:45 a.m. EDT) 
 
 All seats in Scotland have been counted in Britain's latest vote, making clear the scale of the landslide by the Scottish National Party, which captured 56 of the region's 59 seats. 
 
 That was a gain of 50 seats over the nationalists' previous six seats in the 650-seat House of Commons. 
 
 The opposition Labour Party lost 40 seats in Scotland. The result left the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats with just one seat each in Scotland. 
 
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 7:20 a.m. (0620 GMT, 2:20 a.m. EDT) 
 
 With 568 of 650 constituencies reporting results Friday morning in Britain's parliamentary election, the Conservatives were leading with 269 seats, according to election officials. 
 
 The opposition Labour Party has won 214 seats and the Scottish National Party 55. Eight seats have gone to the Democratic Unionists in Northern Ireland and to the Liberal Democrats, and the U.K. Independence Party has earned one seat. Thirteen seats went to other smaller parties. 
 
 An exit poll has predicted that the Conservatives will be the top party in Thursday's vote and the chief pollster says the Conservatives may even capture a majority of the 650 seats in the House of Commons. 
 
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 7 a.m. (0600 GMT, 2 a.m. EDT) 
 
 With 508 of 650 constituencies reporting results Friday morning in Britain's parliamentary election, the Conservatives were leading with 222 seats, according to election officials. 
 
 The opposition Labour Party has won 203 seats and the Scottish National Party 55. Eight seats have gone to the Democratic Unionists in Northern Ireland, while the Liberal Democrats won six seats and the U.K. Independence Party earned one. Thirteen seats went to other smaller parties. 
 
 An exit poll has predicted that the Conservatives will be the top party in Thursday's vote, winning 316 of the 650 seats in the House of Commons. 
 
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 6:40 a.m. (0540 GMT, 1:40 a.m. EDT) 
 
 Labour leader Ed Miliband has acknowledged that his party is facing likely defeat in Britain's general election. 
 
 He says "This has clearly been a very disappointing and difficult night for the Labour Party." 
 
 Miliband won his own Doncaster North seat, but Labour looks set to win fewer than the 256 seats it held before the election. It has been all but wiped out in Scotland, a former stronghold, as voters defected in droves to the Scottish National Party. 
 
 Miliband said "we haven't made the gains that we'd wanted in England and Wales and in Scotland we have seen a surge of nationalism overwhelm our party." 
 
 He said whoever is prime minister in the next government would face the challenge of uniting Britain after a divisive campaign. 
 
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 6:25 a.m. (0525 GMT, 1:25 a.m. EDT) 
 
 George Galloway, one of Britain's most colorful and controversial figures, has lost his Bradford West seat to the Labour Party. 
 
 Galloway, an outspoken critic of Israel and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, won the seat from Labour in a 2012 special election. But some locals accused the left-wing firebrand — who once saluted Saddam Hussein and has appeared on a reality-TV show pretending to be a cat — of spending little time in Bradford, which has a large Muslim population. 
 
 The candidate from the tiny Respect Party lost by a wide margin to Labour's Naz Shah after a bitter campaign in the northern England city. Shah is a political newcomer who has overcome childhood poverty, a teenage forced marriage and the imprisonment of her mother for killing an abusive partner. 
 
 Shah had urged voters to reject Galloway because "we do not need a one-man Messiah to tell us how to come and fix up Bradford." 
 
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 6:15 a.m. (0515 GMT, 1:15 a.m. EDT) 
 
 Prime Minister David Cameron has easily won his Witney seat in southern England, and stopped just short for declaring overall election victory for his Conservatives. 
 
 He told voters "this is clearly a very strong night for the Conservative Party." 
 
 Results seem to support an exit poll's prediction the Tories will be the biggest seat in the House of Commons and may even win a majority of seats. 
 
 A Conservative-led government would face a divided Britain, with the pro-independence Scottish National Party holding almost all the seats north of the border. Cameron has vowed to counter the rise of Scottish nationalism with more powers for Scotland and Wales within the United Kingdom. 
 
 He says "I want my party, and I hope a government that I would like to lead, to reclaim a mantle that we should never have lost — the mantle of one nation, one United Kingdom." 
 
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 5:40 a.m. (0440 GMT, 12:40 a.m. EDT) 
 
 Liberal Democrat Party leader Nick Clegg managed to hang on to his seat in Parliament when results were announced Friday morning, but admitted that his party had suffered a terrible string of setbacks in Britain's general election. 
 
 The party that had been the junior partner in a Conservative-led government lost most of its seats. An exit poll suggested it would win perhaps 10 of the 650 seats in the House of Commons — down from 56 — and several major party figures were ousted by voters. 
 
 After his own win, a woeful Clegg said "It is now painfully clear this has been a cruel and punishing night for the Liberal Democrats." Clegg, who has served as the U.K.'s deputy prime minister for the last five years, hinted that he would be discussing his party leadership with colleges later Friday. 
 
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 5 a.m. (0400 GMT, midnight EDT) 
 
 He's back. London Mayor Boris Johnson has once again won a seat in parliament, this time representing voters in the Uxbridge and Ruislip South district, as Conservative Party candidates did much better than expected in Britain's election. 
 
 The shaggy-haired mayor, seen as a possible future Conservative Party leader, had previously represented Henley. 
 
 "The people of Britain, after a long and exhausting campaign, have finally spoken," he said early Friday. "They have decisively rejected any attempt to take this country back to the 1970s. They want us to go forward with the sensible, moderate policies that have led to a sustained economic recovery." 
 
 Johnson will do both jobs until voters choose a new London mayor in 2016. ||||| British Prime Minister David Cameron is on the cusp of returning to office after Thursday's election. Returns show his Conservative Party close to winning a majority of parliament. (May 8) AP 
 
 An exit poll that predicts the Conservative Party led by Prime Minister David Cameron will win 316 seats in Parliament is projected onto BBC Broadcasting House in London on May 7, 2015. (Photo: Jack Taylor, AFP/Getty Images) 
 
 LONDON — Despite dire polls for the Conservative Party — Tories — throughout the campaign and even with a turn to favor opposition Labour in the last few days, Tory party insiders have maintained a steely optimism about Thursday night's parliamentary vote in Britain. 
 
 The Tories would come out on top because the election was about the economy, and on that issue there was no doubt: Voters trusted them more than the Labour Party. And the polls, they felt, were wrong because, historically, the British don't like to admit that they might vote Tory, with its reputation as the "mean" party. 
 
 But by 10 p.m., when the exit polls were released — with the nation quite literally on the edge of its seat, gathered at election parties everywhere — the Tories appeared to be proved right. Rather than the best-case predictions by many pollsters and observers of 276 seats for the Tories, they would likely get 316 of the 326 needed for an absolute majority. Not over the top, but in easy sight of putting together a governing coalition. 
 
 Disbelief was, among all non-Tories, the singular immediate response. 
 
 Spokespeople for the devastated Labour Party, which exit polls put at 239 seats, simply refused to accept the results, continuing to argue with flabbergasted expressions that somehow magically when the actual results came in, they would find the 50 seats they would need to block another Tory government. 
 
 The other big losers were the Liberal Democrats, the current coalition partner in the Tory-led government. They were equally ravaged by a fall from 57 seats to a projected 10, looking wide-eyed and incredulous on live television. Such a large drop might mean that much of the party's leadership, possibly including Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, would be wiped away. 
 
 Even the other big winner, according to the projections, the Scottish National Party (SNP), which looked like it might take all of Labour's seats in Scotland and advancing from 6 to 58 seats in all, said it was skeptical of such an overwhelming victory. 
 
 But the numbers for both the Tory's and SNP were so large, and the numbers for Labour and the Lib Dems so bleak and depressing, that even a correction in the exit polls was unlikely to change the clear and extraordinary direction of the results. 
 
 British Prime Minister and Conservative leader David Cameron, left, departs from a polling station after voting with his wife Samantha, at the village of Spelsbury in Oxfordshire on May 7, 2015. (Photo: Andy Rain, EPA) 
 
 David Cameron's Tories were in a position not only to form a new coalition and working majority, but to do so with very little horse-trading. The centrist Lib Dems had hoped that even if they lost seats they would be king makers in what was expected to be a close split between Labour and the Tories. Now, practically speaking, they would have no place to go except to follow the Tories, and they would have no leverage with which to negotiate a favorable place in a new coalition. 
 
 In fact, at 316 seats, the Tories could easily turn to the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), with its eight projected seats to reach the voting majority of 323 (Sinn Féin, another Irish party, has five seats, but, in protest, doesn't sit). 
 
 It is not just the Tories unexpected strength that appears now to recast U.K. politics, but it is also Labour's weakness. If the election projections hold, Labour's leader, Ed Miliband, will likely resign or be forced out by the end of the week. 
 
 It is also the rise of the SNP, likely more determined, more militant and far larger than anyone imagined it might ever be, that would become perhaps the central issue in British politics. Nothing more clearly represents the divide and enmity between England and Scotland than a strong Tory showing and an even more dramatic SNP sweep. 
 
 It might be argued that the Cameron government's campaign last year to defeat the referendum for Scottish independence helped propel the popularity of the SNP, which in turn undermined the Labour Party's traditional strength in Scotland, thereby helping to insure the Tory victory. 
 
 It was supposed to be Labour that would make a Devil's bargain with the SNP and, likely, face new calls for Scottish independence. 
 
 But now it seems that, with his new governing majority expected to be in place soon, Cameron will be the one who is going to have to deal with an ever-greater empowered and recalcitrant Scotland. 
 
 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1Ri4WuS ||||| The SNP has staged an unprecedented and historic landslide general election rout in Scotland that saw Labour all but wiped out in its former stronghold and the United Kingdom facing a major new threat to its future. 
 
 On an extraordinary night north of the Border that left any hope Ed Miliband had of winning power in tatters, the Nationalists polled more than 50 per cent of the votes and won 56 of Scotland’s 59 seats compared to just one for the Labour, one for the Tories and one for the Liberal Democrats. 
 
 Among the high-profile casualties were Jim Murphy, the Scottish Labour leader and Douglas Alexander, the Shadow Foreign Secretary. Danny Alexander, the Liberal Democrat Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Charles Kennedy, the former Liberal Democrat leader, also lost their seats in the Nationalist tsunami. 
 
 Lib Dem's Danny Alexander 
 
 Constituency after constituency in Scotland’s former industrial heartlands, most held by Labour for decades, fell as its support collapsed across the country and moved wholesale with record swings to Nicola Sturgeon’s party. Only Ian Murray in Edinburgh South managed to cling on 
 
 The SNP won all seven seats in Glasgow and even Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, Gordon Brown’s former seat, where Labour was defending a majority of more than 23,000. Turnout in many of the seats was more than 70 per cent, a legacy of last September’s referendum. 
 
 Nicola Sturgeon looks delighted at the Glasgow count 
 
 Nicola Sturgeon said the “tectonic plates” of Scottish politics had shifted and Alex Salmond, who was the comfortable victor in the former Lib Dem-held constituency of Gordon, said that a “Scottish lion” had roared and no UK Government could ignore it. 
 
 But a defiant Mr Murphy, who vowed to fight on as Scottish Labour leader, warned the Nationalists they now had a responsibility not to conflate their party “with our country”. 
 
 However, Ian Davidson, who lost his Glasgow South West seat to the SNP, savaged the Scottish Labour campaign and said Mr Murphy should do the “honourable thing” and resign. 
 
 The astonishing scale of the result cast a major shadow over the Union less than eight months after Scots convincingly rejected independence and raised questions over whether David Cameron would have a mandate to govern north of the Border. 
 
 George Osborne, the Chancellor, said that the rise of the SNP presented a "huge challenge" for the Conservatives. "The Conservative party has been shut out of too many constituencies in Scotland for a long time. The Labour Party has now been shut out too. We have to listen to what the Scottish people are telling us," said Mr Osborne. 
 
 Sir Menzies Campbell, the former Scottish Liberal Democrat leader, said Scotland must prepare itself for a second independence referendum. 
 
 Labour's Jim Murphy loses his seat 
 
 Although Ms Sturgeon insisted she would not use a landslide to push for another vote, earlier this week she said that a UK Government would not be “legitimate” unless it had the support of Scottish MPs, a claim vehemently rejected by Mr Cameron in an interview with the Telegraph. 
 
 She said: “This is shaping up to be an outstandingly good night for the SNP but I think a good night for Scotland. The tectonic plates of Scottish politics have clearly shifted – what we are seeing is a historic shift in Scottish political opinion. 
 
 “It hasn’t happened overnight, not even in the last seven months since the referendum, although that’s accelerated the process, but Labour has been losing the trust of people in Scotland now over a period of years.” 
 
 Rejecting Labour claims she is to blame for Mr Cameron’s imminent victory, she said that if the parliamentary arithmetic does not mean the Tories can be “locked out” of Downing Street “that will be because Labour has failed to beat the Conservatives in England. Labour cannot blame the SNP for that.” 
 
 David Cameron looked delighted 
 
 Ms Sturgeon insisted she would not do a deal with the Prime Minister to get full fiscal autonomy, adding: “The Tories cannot ignore what has happened in Scotland tonight – Scotland has clearly voted for an end to austerity and more investment in our public services and a stronger economy. These are the messages we will now take to the very heart of Westminster.” 
 
 In his victory address, Mr Salmond said: “There’s a swing underway in Scotland the like of which has not been seen in recorded politics. It is twice the level of any swing recorded in Scotland or indeed across the United Kingdom since electoral records began in 1835. 
 
 “It’s an extraordinary statement of intent from the people of Scotland. The Scottish lion has roared this morning across the country.” 
 
 He added: “It is inconceivable that such a statement of unity from the people of Scotland – north, south, east and west – can possibly be ignored by any administration of any complexion.” 
 
 Speaking immediately after his defeat, a defiant Mr Murphy said “the fight back starts tomorrow”. He said: "It has proven hard to turn round years of difficulty with the Scottish Labour Party in just five short months. 
 
 "There will be more to say about this and what it means for Scotland in the days to come, but for me personally and for the Scottish Labour Party the fight goes on and our cause continues. The party that has traditionally been the timeless champion of the underdog now finds itself in the position of being the underdog.” 
 
 Annabel Goldie, the former Scottish Tory leader, argued it was now inevitable that Ms Sturgeon will include a “carefully caveated” pledge for a second referendum in her manifesto for next year’s Holyrood election. 
 
 She predicted that the document would reserve the right to call another vote if there was a “material change” in circumstances, but that the SNP would be the sole arbiter in deciding if this test was met. 
 
 Speaking as he conceded defeat in Linlithgow and Falkirk East, Michael Connarty, the incumbent Labour candidate, said the SNP had “misled and betrayed” the people of Scotland with their “spin” based on a "cult of personality" around Ms Sturgeon. 
 
 • Who is Nicola Sturgeon? 
 
 Rather than being a decisive influence on a Labour Government, as the First Minister claimed, he said they would be a noisy irrelevance with the Tories retaining power. 
 
 The first sign of the SNP rout came when an exit poll published at 10pm predicted that the SNP was on course to win 58 seats, all but one in Scotland, but that the Tories and Lib Dems would together just have enough to hold a Commons majority. 
 
 This was immediately treated with extreme scepticism by senior politicians from Labour, the Tories and the SNP, but it became apparent that it was more accurate than any of them suspected. 
 
 The first Scottish declaration, in Kilmarnock and Loudon, confirmed hours of rumours that the Labour and Lib Dem vote had totally collapsed and moved wholesale to the Nationalists, a pattern that was later repeated across the country. 
 
 Cathy Jamieson, a former Scottish minister and Shadow Treasury Minister, lost her seat to the SNP’s Alan Brown with a swing of 26 per cent. 
 
 Douglas Alexander, the Shadow Foreign Secretary and the coordinator of Labour’s UK election campaign, then lost his Paisley and South Renfrewshire seat by 5,684 votes to 20-year-old Mhairi Black, who became the youngest MP for 350 years. 
 
 Mhairi Black, Britain's youngest MP 
 
 Mr Alexander said Scots had rejected the Conservatives but have “not placed that trust in the Labour Party” and it had to regain that trust. Seat after seat then tumbled to the SNP with records for electoral swings being smashed. 
 
 The Nationalists even managed to take Gordon Brown's former seat of Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath with majority of 9,974 a swing of 35 per cent. Mr Murphy lost his Renfrewshire East seat to the SNP’s Kirsten Oswald with a swing of 31.7 per cent. 
 
 All the Lib Dems’ 10 mainland seats also fell, with employment relations minister Jo Swinson losing her Dunbartonshire East constituency and Mr Salmond comfortably taking Gordon by 8,687 votes. 
 
 It was nearly 4am by the time a Scottish seat fell to a party other than the SNP, with Alistair Carmichael, the Lib Dem Scottish Secretary, clinging on in Orkney and Shetland by 817 votes. 
 
 Mr Murray won by 2,637 votes from Neil Hay, the SNP candidate, who was exposed during the campaign as having been a Cybernat troll who compared No voters in last year’s referendum to Nazi collaborators. 
 
 David Mundell, who was the only Tory MP in Scotland at the 2010 election, managed to hold his Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale seat. But Mr Kennedy lost his Ross, Skye and Lochaber seat to the SNP’s Ian Blackford. ||||| LONDON Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservatives are on track to govern Britain for another five years even though they are likely to fall just short of an outright majority at Thursday's election, an exit poll showed. 
 
 The poll gave the Conservatives 316 of 650 seats in the lower house of parliament and the main opposition Labour Party 239. If accurate, that would be one of centre-left Labour's worst ever results. 
 
 Conservative government minister Michael Gove said that if the exit poll proved correct "the Conservatives have clearly won this election". 
 
 Such a result means Britain is likely to face a historic in-out European Union membership referendum in the next two years and that billions of pounds will be cut from government spending to eliminate the budget deficit in the world's fifth largest economy. 
 
 Sterling jumped to a one-week high after the poll. The pound GBP=D4 jumped nearly 2 U.S. cents to $1.5430 in early Australasian trade, hitting its strongest since April 30. 
 
 UK election exit polls have a good track record but the large number of parties competing this time has raised the potential for error. It will be well into Friday before final results are announced. 
 
 The poll, conducted for Britain's national broadcasters, suggests Cameron will have multiple options to form a government, perhaps with the support of either the Liberal Democrats, his current coalition partners, or Northern Irish unionists or both. He could also try and go it alone. 
 
 STUNNING SCOTTISH FORECAST 
 
 The same poll said the Scottish National Party (SNP) would win 58 of Scotland's 59 seats, all but wiping Labour out in its former stronghold. 
 
 Opponents fear the SNP is preparing to use an emphatic win to renew its push for an independence referendum even though it lost such a plebiscite only last year. 
 
 SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon said the exit poll's prediction should be treated with huge caution. But even if the final tally is a little lower it would still be the nationalists' best result in a UK-wide election by a huge margin. 
 
 The centrist Liberal Democrats, who have governed in coalition with the Conservatives for the past five years, will finish with just 10 seats, the exit poll said. If confirmed, that would represent a disaster for leader and deputy prime minister Nick Clegg. 
 
 The UK Independence Party, which wants an immediate British withdrawal from the EU and enjoyed a poll surge last year, was on track to get just two seats. 
 
 A separate poll of Britons who had already voted by YouGov extrapolated a more even result however, putting the Conservatives on 284 seats and Labour on 263, the Liberal Democrats on 31 and the Scottish Nationalists on 48. 
 
 Before the election, opinion polls had shown the Conservatives and Labour neck-and-neck, leaving that industry facing a potential inquest. 
 
 If the main exit poll is accurate, Cameron's position as Conservative leader, which had been looking shaky before the election, would be secure. By exceeding expectations he could expect to quell dissent within his party. 
 
 Conversely, the result would be a crushing defeat for Labour and Ed Miliband, its leader. 
 
 Even if the centre-left party got together with the left-leaning Scottish nationalists and the Greens the exit poll suggested it would still be well short of the 326 seats needed for a majority in parliament. 
 
 Miliband, who was widely perceived to have performed better in the campaign than expected, would be likely to come under pressure to step down as leader. 
 
 The country's mostly right-wing press has long criticised him for being socially-awkward and presiding over what it has described as a dangerous lurch to the left. 
 
 Cameron has pledged to eliminate Britain's budget deficit, now running at 5 percent of gross domestic product, by 2018/19, including through cuts to welfare spending of 12 billion pounds ($18.3 billion). 
 
 (Additional reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Writing by Andrew Osborn. Editing by Mike Peacock) ||||| Photo Advertisement Continue reading the main story 
 
 LONDON — BBC Radio 4 had a laconic, one-word weather forecast Wednesday morning: “changeable.” 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 But the political forecast for Thursday’s British election has been stagnant for some time: a hung Parliament, with no party able to command a clear majority from a fragmented and skeptical electorate. 
 
 On the final day of campaigning, party leaders crisscrossed the country regardless, trying to swing the results of one of the tightest elections here in decades. 
 
 Prime Minister David Cameron of the Conservative Party was in northwest England, Scotland and the Midlands on a 36-hour bus tour, visiting marginal constituencies that could be decided by handfuls of votes. Citing gradual economic improvement during his five years in office, he appealed for support to “finish the job” and warned that the opposition Labour Party would blow apart the budget and be beholden to the more left-wing Scottish National Party. 
 
 Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, was in northern England, where his party is usually strong, visiting marginal districts held by the Conservatives. He repeated his main campaign themes: Working people deserve a better deal, the rich should pay more taxes and the National Health Service is in danger. 
 
 Photo 
 
 The leader of the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg, who serves in Mr. Cameron’s coalition government as deputy prime minister, was traversing Britain from south to north on his own long tour, from Land’s End in Cornwall to John O’Groats in Scotland, arguing that his centrist party was needed to keep a brake on the others and provide political stability to any new government. 
 
 The final polls suggest that the country remains deeply divided, that neither the Conservatives nor Labour has a clear advantage and that many voters are dispirited by the choice in front of them. 
 
 “I’m a bit sick of it all; it all sounds the same,” said Gayle Lazda, 29, who works in a London bookshop. “They have that way of speaking where it all sounds meaningless, and I can’t be bothered to listen. I don’t pretend to myself that it’s going to make a difference.” 
 
 Advertisement Continue reading the main story 
 
 Greg Pittard, a film editor, called the campaign lackluster even as he noted the rise of smaller parties offering new approaches. “Another day, another gimmick, and it’s just not satisfying,” he said. “The only interesting aspect is that different voices are breaking through. In that sense, it’s exciting.” 
 
 All three main party leaders were essentially trying to manage the consequences of their likely inability to claim a clear victory, while maneuvering to see how they could form or join a government that could survive more than a few months. 
 
 A number of models suggest that the two main parties will roughly split two-thirds of the vote. The Conservatives are projected to win the largest number of seats, but short of the 326 seats needed to form a majority (the number falls to 323 if Sinn Fein, which does not take its seats in Parliament, keeps its current five seats; the speaker does not normally vote). The Conservatives may even be unable to achieve a majority in combination with their current coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats, plus the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party and the tacit support of the U.K. Independence Party. 
 
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 Labour is projected to do well in England but suffer a blowout in Scotland, losing many of its 41 seats there to the Scottish National Party. The Scottish party’s resurgence under its new leader, Nicola Sturgeon, since losing Scotland’s independence referendum last year has been the most striking shift of the campaign. A big setback in Scotland could deny Labour the chance to win the most seats and more easily form a government. But it is possible that Mr. Miliband could end up as prime minister anyway, supported by a hodgepodge of anti-Tory parties, including the Scottish nationalists. 
 
 That possibility has led to a debate, led by Mr. Cameron and his supporters, about the “legitimacy” of a second-place party forming a government, but the rules are clear: Any party that can form a majority in Parliament has the right to govern. Not since 1923 has a second-place party managed to form a government; that government lasted less than a year. 
 
 Labour’s opponents have also argued that any government that relied on support from the Scottish nationalists would lack credibility, since it would be dependent on the votes of a party that is committed to an independent Scotland. 
 
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 Labour has said that it will make no formal deal with the Scots, though Mr. Miliband has signaled that if it came time to test whether he could command a majority, he would simply put his party’s program to Parliament and dare the Scottish National Party to vote against it. 
 
 In 2010, the Conservatives won 306 seats, Labour 258, the Liberal Democrats 57 and the Scottish National Party six. 
 
 To form a government, the Conservatives are thought to need around 290 seats this time — 300 would almost certainly be enough to allow them to continue in office in partnership with the Liberal Democrats. But many projections have them at around 280 seats, with the Liberal Democrats getting fewer than 30. So even with the Democratic Unionists and the U.K. Independence Party, expected to get at least a tenth of the vote but only a handful of seats, Mr. Cameron may find himself short of a majority. 
 
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 The same projections have Labour at 266 seats or so — meaning it would need to gain the support of the Liberal Democrats and also the Scottish National Party, which polls suggest could win 50 of Scotland’s 59 seats. The S.N.P. is farther to the left than Labour and wants more spending than Labour considers wise. The parties also disagree fundamentally on Britain’s nuclear deterrent, which the Scottish nationalists want to scrap. 
 
 Still, the S.N.P. and other smaller parties have vowed to keep the Conservatives out of Downing Street, and together with Labour, they may command a majority big enough to do that, even if the Tories get the most seats. 
 
 Mr. Cameron, who remains prime minister until he resigns or Parliament votes a motion of no confidence, could hold on until May 27, the date of the Queen’s Speech, which formally opens the new Parliament and sets out the projected government agenda. 
 
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 But if the election returns are bad for him, he might resign beforehand. Everyone will start doing the math by about dawn on Friday, but the leadership and composition of the next government may not be clear for at least a week and possibly more. 
 
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 The campaign has focused almost exclusively on domestic issues, but the outcome of the election will be important for other big questions, too. 
 
 Mr. Cameron vows to hold a referendum on continued British membership in the European Union by the end of 2017 and wants to get back more control over some issues from Brussels; Mr. Miliband has avoided backing a referendum and argues that Britain is better off in Europe, so long as new powers are not transferred to the Continent. 
 
 Both main parties also acknowledge that they will continue to cut military spending, which is already slipping below the NATO guideline of 2 percent of gross domestic product. And there is an increasing sense, especially in Washington, that Britain is slipping away from its close partnership with the United States, particularly on military matters. 
 
 A “Little England,” as Jeremy Shapiro of the Brookings Institution wrote recently, “does not augur well for a U.S. foreign policy which aims specifically to empower like-minded states to share the burdens of leadership.” 
 
 Polls open at 7 a.m. and close at 10 p.m. A nationwide exit poll, shared by all the national networks, will be released soon after the polls close.
– The Conservative Party swept to power today in Britain's Parliamentary elections, winning a wholly unexpected and resounding victory and bringing the election to a much-quicker-than-expected conclusion. Polls ahead of Election Day showed Conservatives locked in a tight race with the opposition Labour Party, raising the possibility of days or weeks of negotiations to form a government. Instead, the party won an outright majority, taking 326 of 650 seats. But as Prime Minister David Cameron returns to 10 Downing Street in a stronger position than before, a trio of big names are out: Labour Party leader Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats, and Independence Party leader Nigel Farage have resigned in the election's wake. More: Line of the night, from Cameron: "I want my party, and I hope a government that I would like to lead, to reclaim a mantle that we should never have lost—the mantle of one nation, one United Kingdom." CNN runs down the implications of the Conservative Party win. Two big ones: Expect to start reading the word "Brexit" much more often, with Cameron having vowed to hold a 2017 referendum on whether the UK should remain a part of the EU. And could Scotland leave Britain? CNN presents the possibility, noting that the Scottish National Party's victory was a staggering one, with it taking 56 out of the 59 UK parliamentary seats in Scotland. CNN points to "rumblings in the British press" that such an SNP victory could spur yet another referendum, this one in 2016, on a split. The view from Michael Wolff: "It might be argued that the Cameron government's campaign last year to defeat the referendum for Scottish independence helped propel the popularity of the SNP, which in turn undermined the Labour Party's traditional strength in Scotland, thereby helping to [ensure] the Tory victory," he writes in USA Today. Interesting side-reading: The biggest loser of the night? Russell Brand. Among the night's most fascinating victors: Mhairi Black, who becomes the UK's youngest lawmaker since 1667.