UK general election 2024 updates: Exit poll moments away as last-minute votes cast

Former prime minister Theresa May and former chairman of the Conservative backbench 1922 committee Sir Graham Brady have been given peerages in the dissolution honours list.

Downing Street released the surprise honours list shortly before polling stations close at 10pm.

The political parties are spending more than £1m on online advertising in just 24 hours, analysis suggests.

An organisation that tracks digital political advertising found that by 6pm today, with four hours of voting remaining, the parties’ main pages had spent £481,000 between them on Meta (Facebook) alone, with an estimated further £250,000 on Google/YouTube.

Transparency campaign group Who Targets Me found that while the Conservatives had significantly increased their Meta spending before polls opened, they still trailed Labour, spending an estimated £159,000 against Labour’s £257,000.

Reform UK has spent around £30,000 and the Lib Dems almost as much at £26,000, the figures suggested.

New polling has forecast how the UK’s different ethnic minority groups will likely be voting on Thursday, with the war in Gaza a major concern for 1 in 5 of the nation’s Asian voters.

Exclusive polling for The Independent by More In Common shows that Black voters are still far more likely to vote Labour than any other party and more than any other ethnicity.

Despite the Labour’s recent race rows, some 64 per cent of Black voters are set to rally behind Sir Keir Starmer’s party, compared with 37 per cent of the country’s white population.

Read the full article here:

Archie Mitchell met voters in the Godalming and Ash constituency:

For some, the defeat will be a surprise, for others they will have seen the writing on the wall during the campaign.

There will be several removal vans on the parliamentary estate in the coming days and weeks as the former MPs clear out their offices and make way for the new intake.

It is expected some new MPs will start arriving in Parliament just hours after the results are announced as they begin a new chapter in their lives.

They will eventually be assigned office space in Parliament by their party whips once the areas have been cleared out.

The taxpayer-funded Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) – which governs MPs’ expenses – supports those candidates who have lost their seat.

Winding-down payments are designed to help departing MPs close their office and manage the departure of staff.

John Rentoul’s guide to what to watch for, “Portillo moments” — and when best to take a power nap:

Voters are awaiting the exit poll which will indicate who has won the General Election as the final ballots are cast following weeks of campaigning by party leaders.

Polling stations across the UK opened at 7am, giving millions of voters the chance to decide if the Tory incumbent Rishi Sunak remains in the top job or the Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer enters Downing Street.

Opinion polls suggest Labour is on course to secure a big majority in the House of Commons and form a new government.

The first indication of whether the pollsters were correct will come moments after the ballot closes at 10pm, when the exit poll is broadcast by the BBC, Sky and ITV.

But the campaign trail was shaken by the last-minute addition of Nigel Farage as the new leader of Reform UK, chasing the PM’s tail in shock polls which saw the party only marginally behind the Conservatives in the vote share.

Read the full story here: