Interactive map shows where your constituency has voted for General Election 2024 – check your area
Sir Keir Starmer won a historic landslide victory as he swept Rishi Sunak from No10
MILLIONS took to polling stations across the UK yesterday to cast their ballots in a crunch General Election.
Polls opened at 7am and closed at 10pm on July 4 and the results have been flooding in all night.
Brits woke up this morning to discover Sir Keir Starmer has won a historic landslide victory and swept Rishi Sunak out of No10.
In his victory speech, the Labour leader said the UK was again experiencing the “sunlight of hope”, as he declared “we did it” and said today “we start the next chapter” .
How to track the results LIVE with our interactive map
Simply follow our interactive chart, where we have been updating the results for the General Election as they were announced.
Make sure you keep refreshing to see the latest results.
On a historic night:
- Labour has reached the required 326 seats in a Tory wipeout
- Rishi Sunak resigned saying he had ‘heard people’s anger’
- Sir Keir Starmer met the King and gave his first speech as PM
- Piers Morgan told our Never Mind The Ballots election show that Sir Keir MUST deliver after the Tory disaster
- A battle for the soul of the Conservative party is already underway
- Former PM Liz Truss was among a series of big Tory beasts to lose their seats.
- Tory defector Lee Anderson claimed the first Reform seat. He was followed by Nigel Farage, who has become an MP for the first time at the eighth attempt
- Mr Farage warned Labour “will be in trouble very, very quickly”
What is the voting system?
The UK uses the first past the post voting system – which essentially means the candidate with the most votes wins.
It means candidates do not need to win a majority of voters in a constituency to become the MP, just one more vote than the person who comes second.
This is different to many European countries who use proportional representation systems – where seats are divvied up to parties based on their national vote share.
How does that decide the PM?
Whichever party leader wins a majority of the 650 Commons seats up for grabs – so 326 – will be asked by the King to form the next government.
If nobody wins an outright majority, the leader of the largest party is usually given the first crack at trying to form an administration, either as a shaky minority government or creating a coalition with smaller parties.
But that is not a clear-cut rule. In 2010 Gordon Brown briefly tried to cling on by sealing a coalition deal with the Lib Dems despite David Cameron’s Tories winning the most seats.
What are the new boundary changes?
A major shake-up of the electoral map means the constituency you voted in at the previous election might not actually exist or may have moved.
The boundaries of lots of seats have been tweaked, either to take in areas of other seats, lose ground or be abolished altogether.
The carve-up was done to distribute voters more fairly so there are not wild differences in constituency populations.
For example, the Isle of Wight – which had the largest electorate – is being split down the middle into two new constituencies.
What will Rishi Sunak do next?
By Sophia Sleigh, Political Correspondent
Rishi Sunak repeatedly promised to stay on as an MP if he lost the General Election.
He told ITV’s Loose Women: “Yes of course I’m staying, I love being an MP, I love my constituents, I love my home in North Yorkshire.”
And the outgoing Prime Minister looks on course to hold the seat of Richmond and Northallerton.
However, politicians often say one thing when they are in campaign mode but change their minds in the face of defeat.
David Cameron vowed to remain prime minister even if he lost the Brexit referendum vote in 2016.
But after the UK voted to leave, he brought an abrupt end to his six-year premiership.
Rumours have long swirled that Mr Sunak could head to California’s tech heartland Silicon Valley.
Mr Sunak took an interest in technology and Artificial Intelligence throughout his time in Government.
His career before politics included working as a junior analyst at Goldman Sachs and for the hedge fund Thélème Partners in California.
And with the weight of a Tory defeat weighing heavy on his shoulders, he might choose a different path.