Northern Ireland

What to watch for in the election count drama

Polling venues for the upcoming general election range from a 200-year-old windmill in Suffolk, to a hair salon in the heart of Hull.
Polling venues for the upcoming general election range from a 200-year-old windmill in Suffolk, to a hair salon in the heart of Hull. Polling venues for the upcoming general election range from a 200-year-old windmill in Suffolk, to a hair salon in the heart of Hull.

So tomorrow is election day, and all the campaigning, debating, arguing is over, well for a day or two anyway.

Election night can be a night of great drama, with first the 'exit poll' results, and then the actual first actual results coming in around 11pm. And with the exit poll, and just 3-4 actual results, we should be able to tell which parties and party leaders are going to have a good night.

So, if you are staying up to watch the coverage here are perhaps a few pointers and results to watch out for.

First of all, we will have the exit poll announced just after 10pm – it can’t be announced before then as there are strict electoral laws about announcing any poll results whilst the polls are open.

As this is commissioned by all of the three major networks i.e. BBC, ITV, and SKY, we will have one set of projections to analyse. Run by two of the major UK polling companies, and co-ordinated by top elections expert Sir John Curtice, it has a good reputation for being fairly accurate.

It should be, as it involves a huge polling operation on election day and of course it has the added advantage (that pre-election polls don’t have) of polling people who we know have just voted. So, if you don’t want to stay up, or have an early start Friday morning, you could watch the exit poll results and then go to bed being fairly confident that the actual final results won’t differ that much.

Then of course we will have a bit of a wait until the first official results start coming in, and the time will be filled by the pundits debating the exit poll results and speculating about their accuracy.

The first result in will be a race between ‘Houghton and Sunderland South’ and ‘Newcastle Upon Tyne Central’ who always have a major race between them to see who can be the first to announce.

Newcastle won the last time declaring at 10.53pm, but I understand that Sunderland will be going all out to reclaim the honour this time. These are both safe Labour seats so the actual results won’t tell us a lot.

Then the momentum will start and the next results will start to trickle in around 11.30-midnight. The first several seats to announce will probably be Labour with the first Conservative win probably coming from ‘Basildon and Billericay’ or ‘Broxbourne’ around 12.30am-1am.

Heading towards 1am the first key result will be ‘Workington’ – if the Conservatives win here it could mean they are on their way to an overall majority, particularly as it will probably mean the Conservatives could be winning in other key seats in the North of England.

The first Scottish seats to declare will be ‘Rutherglen and Hamilton West’ or ‘Kilmarnock and Loudoun’ at around 1am-1.30am, with both probably going SNP though the former could go Labour. The first Welsh seat to announce will probably be Swansea West at about 1.30pm and will be safe Labour.

The two Bury seats i.e. Bury North and Bury South are key and should come in around 1.45-2am, and if the Conservatives take Bury South, and perhaps Bury North as well, then they are probably on their way to an overall majority.

Now the results will be coming thick and fast – Clwyd South should come in around this time and is the first Welsh seat worth watching out for. It is currently Labour but the Conservatives have hopes of taking this seat.

North Down or West Belfast could be the first Northern Ireland constituencies to declare around 1.30am-2am and should be followed by Lagan Valley and one of the other Belfast seats around 2am-2.30am. Though you can never really tell with Northern Ireland counts.

..and it’ll all be nearly over by them in terms of determining the final results, but regardless of the outcome, enjoy the craic!

** Bill White is Managing Director of Belfast polling and market research company LucidTalk. You can follow LucidTalk on Twitter: @LucidTalk.