Election 2024: Keir Starmer and Labour predicted to win 170-seat majority in exit poll

Keir Starmer is on course to secure a thumping Labour majority, according to the exit poll released at 10.00pm this evening. 

It would mark a dramatic repudiation of the Conservative Party’s offer this election, suggesting Rishi Sunak’s prediction of a so-called “super-majority” has come to pass. 

The exit poll, which is compiled on the basis of a large-scale survey of voters as they leave polling stations, put Labour on 410 seats and the Conservatives on just 131.

It means Labour is predicted to win a majority of 170 seats. 

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Among the smaller parties, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is placed on 13 seats, while the Liberal Democrats are predicted to win 61 and the Greens 2.

According to the exit poll, the SNP is set to suffer a collapse in Scotland. The party is predicted to win 10 seats, having won 48 at the 2019 general election. 

Reacting to the exit poll, Scotland’s former first minister Nicola Sturgeon told ITV: “This is not a good night for the SNP on those numbers.”

She added: “This is at the grimmer end of the expectations for the SNP if the exit poll is right.”

Jeremy Hunt is among several cabinet ministers who will lose their seat tonight, the exit poll indicates.

The chancellor is the most high-profile Conservative set to miss out, the poll suggested, with the Liberal Democrats most likely to take his seat in Godalming & Ash.

Defence secretary Grant Shapps and veterans minister Johnny Mercer could also lose their seats.

Rishi Sunak would be under intense pressure to step down as Conservative leader if the projection proves accurate.

The Labour Party has led the Conservatives in the polls since November 2021, when stories of lockdown gatherings during Covid began to emerge — a scandal that later became known as “Partygate”. The Conservative Party’s fortunes were further doomed by the September 2022 “mini-budget”, drawn up during Liz Truss’ brief premiership. 

Since becoming prime minister, Rishi Sunak has failed to meaningfully alter the Conservative Party’s polling and has suffered a series of gaffes through this ill-fated election campaign — which he was not legally obliged to call until January 2025. 

Baroness Davidson, the former leader of the Scottish Conservative, said the prime minister had run “one of the worst election campaigns in living memory”.

Speaking after the exit poll results, she told Sky News: “How do you cobble together a group of people who are going to vote for a party if you don’t have a coherent narrative of what the last 14 years is like if you’ve broken  your promises, if you run probably one of the worst election campaigns in living memory, and if you have also lost your reputation for competency in government?”

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