Polling stations opened across the United Kingdom on Thursday for nearly 46.9 million people to cast their votes in the country’s general election. Voters from across England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland will pick 650 MPs from over 3,300 candidates.
The counting will begin once the voting ends at 10 pm local time, reported BBC. While some seats are expected to be declared by midnight, the final results of the election will be out by Friday afternoon.
To form a majority in the House of Commons, a party has to win 326 seats. While opinion polls earlier showed the Conservatives taking a lead, they later indicated that the Labour Party has narrowed the gap. The incumbent, Theresa May, is competing against the Labour Party’s Jeremy Corbyn for the prime minister’s position.
On April 18, May had called for a snap election three years earlier than scheduled, saying it would help Britain make a smooth exit from the European Union. The last few weeks of campaigning have been marred with national security concerns with the country facing successive attacks claimed by militant groups.
On the night of June 3, a van drove into people near the London Bridge, killing eight people and injuring several. Two weeks before that 22 people had died in a suicide bombing at a concert in Manchester. In March 2017, a man had mowed people down with his vehicle on the Westminster bridge while heading to the Parliament building. At least 40 others were injured in the incident.
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