Overall, results have varied remarkably, with the Conservatives winning seats far down their target list and missing out on seats that were held by only slim margins. The Liberal Democrats overall have lost ground, suffering a net loss of seven seats, although their losses were greater, and were compensated with a number of gains. The SNP and Plaid Cymru have ended up with the same number of seats that they won in 2005, as has the Social Democratic and Labour Party and, depending on the result in the final Northern Ireland seat, Sinn Fein may also achieve a consistent result.

Independents have lost their seats in Blaenau Gwent and Wyre Forest, while Sylvia Hermon, formerly a member of the Ulster Unionist Party, has retained her seat as a pro-Labour independent unionist. The Ulster Unionists, who dominated Northern Irish politics for most of the twentieth century, have been left with no seats for the first in their history. Green Party leader Caroline Lucas has made history by winning a seat for her party in the Commons for the first time, winning Brighton Pavilion in a close three-way race against the Conservatives and Labour. Results have not been declared in the key Respect seats of Bethnal Green & Bow, where George Galloway won in 2005, and Poplar & Limehouse, where he is running this time.

The overall seat results are reflected in the following table (which will be updated as the final seats are declared):

In terms of popular vote, the Conservatives have clearly come out on top. Amongst the 613 seats which have declared, the Conservatives have polled 36.1%, which is a swing of almost 4% since 2005. The Labour vote is down over 6% to 29.2%. The Liberal Democrats have largely failed to gain the extra popular votes that have been universally indicated in recent polls, only polling 22.9%, just 1% higher than the 2005 result. Due to the fact that the Lib Dems had more marginal seats vulnerable to the Conservatives, the swing from Labour to the Tories saw the Lib Dems lose seats despite an increase in their vote.

The election result in Scotland was remarkably dull, compared to the rest of the UK. Every single seat was won by the same party as in 2005, with the exception of Glasgow North East, which was won by then-Speaker Michael Martin in 2005, and was won back by his former Labour party at a 2009 by-election. Labour even managed to win back two seats that had been lost to the Liberal Democrats and the SNP in by-elections over the last term. The Lib Dems have held ten seats, and are expected to retain their eleventh seat of Argyll & Bute after the votes there are counted. The SNP has managed to hold the six seats they won in 2005, but lost the seat of Glasgow East, which they had won in a 2008 by-election. The Conservatives, despite winning the largest number of seats in the UK, have only retained a single seat on the English border. In terms of popular vote, the Scottish Labour Party won over 40% of the vote, with the three other main parties winning between 16% and 20%.

There was more change in Wales, where the Conservatives gained more ground. Labour still maintained a majority of seats, falling from 30 to 26. Labour lost four seats to the Tories and one to Plaid Cymru, but regained the seat of Blaenau Gwent from independent Dai Davies. Blaenau Gwent is traditionally very strong for Labour, but was lost at the 2005 election after a battle of candidate selection. The Conservatives gained a fifth seat from the Liberal Democrats, gaining the relatively safe seat of Montgomeryshire from colourful MP Lembit Opik in a shock result. This gave the Tories a total of eight seats, and saw them overtake the Lib Dems as the second-biggest party in Wales. Plaid had won three seats in 2005, but the redistribution saw the boundaries in northwestern Wales dramatically redrawn and one of their seats was abolished, so their gain off Labour simply brings them back to their 2005 result. In terms of popular vote, Labour achieved their result with only 36% of the vote, with 26% for the Tories, 20% for the Lib Dems and 11% for Plaid.

The result in Northern Ireland was largely consistent, but with a few dramatic results. DUP leader, and Northern Ireland’s first minister, Peter Robinson, lost his seat of Belfast East with a 22% swing to Mayor of Belfast Naomi Long, the deputy leader of the Alliance Party. The Alliance are the only significant non-sectarian party in Northern Ireland, but despite contesting elections for almost 40 years have never before won a seat at Westminster. They have a loose alliance with the Liberal Democrats. In the neighbouring seat of North Down, sitting MP Sylvia Hermon was re-elected as an independent with the tacit support of the DUP. Hermon had been the sole remaining MP from the Ulster Unionist Party, but was considered sympathetic to Labour and left the party when they renewed their classic alliance with the Conservative Party. The alliance of the UUP and Conservatives failed to win a single seat in a country they dominated only a decade ago. The DUP held on to their eight remaining seats, and the moderate nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party held on to their three. Sinn Fein has retained four of their five seats and are still waiting on a result in Fermanagh & South Tyrone, where the DUP and UUP have supported a common candidate in independent unionist Rodney Connor. If Sinn Fein retain the seat it will be the first time that the unionist forces have failed to win a majority of seats in Northern Ireland, with the DUP and Hermon only holding nine seats out of eighteen.

I will be posting full result breakdowns for these three countries and the nine regions of England over the next few days once the final 35 seats have been declared, but for now I have posted some large maps showing the election results for different areas in 2005 and 2010, you’ll need to click them and enlarge them to full size to see the full detail in each map.

Result of the 2005 general election in London.

Result of the 2010 general election in London.

Result of the 2010 general election in Central Scotland.

Result of the 2005 general election in Northern Ireland.

Result of the 2010 general election in Northern Ireland.

Result of the 2005 general election in the South of England and Wales. Click to enlarge.

Result of the 2010 general election in the South of England and Wales. Click to enlarge

Result of the 2005 general election in the Midlands and Wales. Click to enlarge

Result of the 2010 general election in the Midlands and Wales. Click to enlarge

Result of the 2005 general election in the North of England. Click to enlarge

Result of the 2010 general election in the North of England. Click to enlarge

Click through to read the liveblog of the election results.

7:30am – The Lib Dems have been hit hard in Cornwall. The Lib Dems won all five seats in Cornwall in 2005, and notionally held all six seats after the redistribution added an extra seat in Cornwall. One seat will not be counted until later today, but out of the other five the Liberal Democrats only retained two, losing three to the Conservatives.

7:18am – The Lib Dems have gained Solihull in the West Midlands and Bradford East in West Yorkshire. Solihull was a Lib Dem seat in 2005 but was considered notionally Conservative after the redistribution.

7:16am – They have yet to begin counting in the East End seats of Bethnal Green & Bow and Poplar & Limehouse, seats where Respect is hoping to win. It has been said that the turnout has been very high in these seats. We now have 26 London seats yet to declare and 17 in the rest of the country.

7:00am – Excluding the 23 seats yet to be counted, we are expecting 28 more results in London and 20 seats in the rest of the UK, including one in Northern Ireland.

6:47am – The Lib Dems won three out of five seats in Somerset in 2005, but this time around they have won four, gaining Wells from the Conservatives, whose sitting MP was damaged by the expenses scandal.

6:34am – In most regions we have most seats now reporting, excluding the 22 seats which have yet to begin counting and the one seat which will not vote until late May. All but two seats in West Midlands have reported. All but seven seats in the South East have reported. Only five seats in the South West have yet to report, including four in Cornwall. All seats in Scotland and Wales have reported, as have all but one in Northern Ireland, East Midlands and North East England. All but three seats in the East of England have been declared. Most of the remaining seats are in the urban areas of London, North West England and Yorkshire.

5:59am - Labour MP Margaret Hodge has seen off a BNP challenge in Barking and substantially increased her majority on an increased turnout.

5:49am – The Greens have won Brighton Pavilion, their first ever seat in the House of Commons. Caroline Lucas, the leader of the Greens, has won the seat.

5:39am – Cardiff North has been retained by the Conservatives, so we have results in all 40 Welsh seats. The final figures are:

• LAB – 26 (-4) – 36%
• CON – 8 (+5) – 26%
• LD – 3 (-1) – 20%
• PC – 3 (+1) – 11%

5:19am – Colne Valley in West Yorkshire was a late addition to the Lib Dem target list. Labour has been pushed into third place by the Lib Dems, but the Conservatives outpolled the Lib Dems by 8.8%.

5:13am – The seat of Birmingham Edgbaston has been narrowly retained by Labour MP Gisela Stuart. The seat was the first gain for Labour in 1997, and was expected to be declared early, but a number of recounts has delayed a result. In the end she won by 1200 votes, which isn’t that slim. The Tories only managed a 0.5% swing.

5:07am – All but one seat in Scotland has been declared, and so far every seat has gone to the same party that won it in the 2005 election. Labour has regained the two seats it lost in by-elections in the last term, as well as retaining the seat won by then-Speaker Michael Martin in 2005. A very boring result.

4:57am – The DUP has retained East Londonderry, meaning they have maintained eight of their nine seats. We’re still waiting on Fermanagh and South Tyrone, and Cardiff North, and then we’ll have Northern Ireland and Wales completed.

4:54am – Former Home Secretary Charles Clarke has lost Norwich South to the Lib Dems. The Greens did well, gaining 8%, but still came fourth. The Lib Dem vote basically stayed still, but the Greens cut a huge swathe through the Labour vote, and the Lib Dems came out on top.

4:50am – Senior cabinet minister Ed Balls has just held on in his seat of Morley & Outwood.

4:45am – The Lib Dems are now down by five seats.

4:28am – Celebrity candidate Esther Rantzen’s challenge to Labour in Luton North only managed a distant fourth.

4:15am – The alliance of the Ulster Unionists and Conservatives has been a complete failure, with the party not winning a single seat. The DUP has maintained eight of their nine seats while former UUP member Sylvia Hermon has held on as an independent. The sole potential seat remaining for the unionists is Fermanagh and South Tyrone, where Sinn Fein is being challenged by an independent unionist, for whom both the DUP and UUP have withdrawn.

4:11am – The Leeds seat of Brown ally and cabinet minister Ed Balls is looking set to go to a recount.

4:03am – Independent MP Richard Taylor has been defeated by the Conservatives in Wyre Forest.

3:59am – We’ve got very few results from London: only three out of 73. Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats currently are outpolling Labour in England, but have won far fewer seats.

3:56am – It appears that BNP leader Nick Griffin has failed to get higher than third in Barking.

3:48am – Rochdale, a Labour-Lib Dem marginal and home of the “bigotgate” affair, has been retained by Labour. It appears that the protest vote went to the Conservatives, who went up 8% while Labour and the Lib Dems both lost votes.

3:42am – The Tories have gained Carlisle.

3:38am – There are only two Northern Ireland seats and five Welsh seats yet to declare, so I should be able to give some overall results for those regions soon.

3:32am – The Lib Dems have gained Burnley, but failed to gain Newcastle Central.

3:22am – Labour has retained Oxford East, a seat that the Lib Dems were hoping to win.

3:09am – The SDLP has now retained all three of their seats, while Sinn Fein have retained all three of those that have been declared so far, with two remaining Sinn Fein seats and one DUP seat yet to declare. The DUP has lost one seat to the Alliance and sitting MP Sylvia Hermon, elected as an Ulster Unionist in 2005, has been re-elected as a pro-Labour independent unionist in North Down.

3:08am – There have been a number of Lib Dem gains and losses, but overall they have so far had a net loss of one seat, holding 10 seats so far.

2:43am – Senior Lib Dem frontbencher Chris Huhne has managed to increase his slim majority in Eastleigh.

2:29am – The SDLP has managed to hold on to the majority-unionist seat of Belfast South, which was a shock gain for the SDLP in 2005.

2:28am – The Conservatives have gained Basildon South & East Thurrock.

2:23am – Sitting Lib Dem MP Lembit Opik has been defeated by the Conservatives in Montgomeryshire in Wales.

2:14am – The Conservatives are starting to rack up some gains, having gained Aberconwy in North Wales and Loughborough in Leicestershire.

2:08am - Labour has now also gained Glasgow East, which they lost to the SNP in a 2008 by-election.

2:05am – Labour has also regained Dunfermline and West Fife, which they lost to the Lib Dems in a 2006 by-election.

1:56am – Labour has regained Blaenau Gwent in Wales from the independent who won the 2006 by-election after the sitting Labor AM had won the seat as an independent at the 2005 election before dying a year later.

1:47am – The Tories have fallen short in Tooting, which they should have won if they are on track for a majority.

1:36am – Labour has held on to City of Durham with practically no swing to the Lib Dems. This could suggest that the exit poll’s dismal prediction for the Lib Dems is accurate.

1:31am – Grrr, they were about to announce whether the Lib Dems had gained City of Durham off Labour and instead they went to Kirkcaldy to announce that – shock horror! – Gordon Brown has held his seat.

1:15am – We’re starting to see quite a few results. So far Labour has lost two seats: one to the Tories and one to Plaid Cymru, and the DUP has lost one seat to the non-sectarian Alliance Party. It also now appears that in North Down, independent MP Sylvia Hermon, a former member of the UUP who resigned over their alliance with the Conservatives, and for whom the DUP withdraw, has been re-elected.

1:10am – The Lib Dems have held Torbay from a Conservative challenge.

1:05am – Labour has now lost the Bristol seat of Kingswood to the Conservatives with a 9.4% swing.

1:03am – Plaid Cymru has now gained the new seat of Arfon from Labour. This seat covers much of the former seat of Caernarfon that was a PC seat, but the redistribution cut PC’s seats from 3 to 2, and this should take them back to 3.

12:58am – Labour has also held the North East seats of Durham North and Darlington with swings of around 9% in both seats.

12:56am – The Lib Dems have held Thornbury & Yate in the South West, but with a swing to the Tories.

12:50am – The Alliance are allied to the Lib Dems, although they’ve never had seats in Westminster since they were first created (when they gained a couple of defectors, who lost at the next election). They are the biggest non-sectarian party in Northern Ireland, and it’s a really fascinating result. Peter Robinson has been badly hurt by recent scandals, and clearly this has hurt him tonight. He still is First Minister, but it weakens the influence of the Unionists in a close hung parliament.

12:49am – Whoa. We have the first surprise result of the night, and it’s in Belfast. Northern Ireland first minister Peter Robinson (DUP) has been defeated by the Alliance candidate with a 22.9% swing.

12:44am – Ian Paisley Jr has retained the DUP seat of North Antrim, where his father was stepping down. He was challenged by Jim Allister, leader of the hardline Traditional Unionist Voice, but he held on comfortably. The coalition of Ulster Unionists and Conservatives came fourth, although you’d think there would be some tactical voting in a race between two other unionist candidates.

12:41am – Pat Doherty was re-elected in West Tyrone with a swing from the DUP to Sinn Fein. Mind you, there was a strong independent in West Tyrone in 2005 who came second, and their absence makes it hard to calculate a swing.

12:37am – David Dimbleby is interrogating an Electoral Commission official, but I think I just saw the Sinn Fein seat of West Tyrone pop up, and the figures now show Sinn Fein in second place (!), so let’s call that a result, although it’s not much of a surprise. West Tyrone is now a majority-nationalist seat, although it was held by the Ulster Unionists at the 1997 election.

12:31am – Sky also believe that Green Party leader Caroline Lucas has won Brighton Pavilion.

12:22am – Sky is reporting that they believe the Lib Dems have gained Edinburgh South from Labour, but haven’t got a result yet.

12:19am – It’s very frustrating how confident BBC and Sky journalists are that their exit polls are right, despite the fact they have already adjusted the Lib Dem seat count by two on the basis of three safe Labour seats where the Lib Dems came third. The exit poll doesn’t seem particularly useful or relevant, which is exactly what Labour politicians are trying to say. It reminds me of the 1992 count, when a similar thing happened with an exit poll predicting a hung parliament and the BBC holding on to the projection long after early results indicated the exit poll was wrong.

11:53pm – There are lots of reports of long queues and some reports of voters being turned away, and at least one example each of voting time being extended and ballot papers running out. This can be a problem in countries with voluntary voting when there is a high turnout, particularly in this age of financial stringency which leads election administrators to not print enough ballots for the entire population.

11:42pm – Labour has also held Sunderland Central, a seat the Tories were picking as a possible distant target, where Labour only had a 5% swing to the Tories.

11:27pm – We now have a second result, in Washington & Sunderland West. Labour has held the seat, with a 16% away from Labour and a 7% swing to the Tories.

10:54pm – First result in Houghton & Sunderland South. A 12% swing away from Labour and a 5% swing to the Tories. Comfortable Labour win.

10:48pm – It appears that Sunderland has failed to break their record for counting. If the turnout is up substantially that would explain the delay, as well as the fact that a large number of candidates are standing. As the first seat to declare, the seat will get a lot of attention, which attracts more candidates. Sunderland South was first to declare in 1992, 1997, 2001 and 2005. Having said that, in 1992 the news media completely missed the story, with a number of other seats picked as the ‘first to declare’ with dedicated reporters, but the Sunderland South result was not televised. So who knows, another seat may surprise as the first to count.

10:32pm – I’ve heard from other sources that the exit poll only included three Labour-Lib Dem marginals, despite previous evidence suggesting that the Lib Dems were doing very well in those seats.

10:27pm - My understanding is that the exit poll is based on a small number of seats. FiveThirtyEight has reverse-engineered the poll to determine that they think the Lib Dems would have polled 23% in that poll. I think it’s much more plausible that the Lib Dem swing is concentrated in seats that have not been included in the poll. It doesn’t sound right.

10:10pm – Sky News is showing the fascinating spectacle of polling workers in Sunderland running with ballot boxes into the counting room in order to try and break their record by finishing the count within 43 minutes.

10:06pm – The BBC/ITN/Sky poll projects a result of 307 Conservative, 255 Labour, 59 Lib Dem and 29 other. For some reason they don’t seem to be reporting the vote figures.

10pm (7am AEST) – Polls have now closed in the UK. The exit poll will be shortly reported, and I will be beginning the liveblog.

While these figures are quite clear and consistent amongst all the polls, it is extremely difficult to make predictions. Polls in the past have overestimated Labour’s support, which would suggest we are on track for the Lib Dems to come second. On the other hand, that tradition took place in an era when voting Labour was popular and cool, while voting Conservative was not. It is possible that such a trend could be reversed, and “shy Tories” could be replaced by “shy Labour”.

The biggest question, however, is how the vote numbers translate into seats. Most of the British media has been using the “Uniform National Swing” model to produce figures for how they expect the numbers to go, and expect a variation on this model to be used by the BBC to extrapolate their exit poll into a result. Having said that, you would have to think that with such massive turmoil in the polls and shifts in support and the rise of the Lib Dems, you would expect the swing to be very non-uniform, and in ways that could effect it. I would expect that the result would deviate away from UNS in such a way that sees Labour lose more seats to both the Tories and the Lib Dems.

This has been reflected in the model used by US polling blog FiveThirtyEight, who have developed a model where they make interpretations about which voters are switching between parties and use a variation on proportional swing. While the UNS model used by FiveThirtyEight sees a 36-28 gap between Tory and Labour leave the Tories with only ten seats more (and so far short of a majority that only the Lib Dems could deliver a majority), the FiveThirtyEight model on similar figures sees Labour lose sixty more seats: fourty to the Conservatives and twenty to the Lib Dems.

Despite my earlier refusal, I think it’s worth me taking a punt at a prediction. I won’t make detailed seat-by-seat, or even region-by-region picks, but I will make a few broad statements.

First of all, I think the polls are mostly right, but if anything the Lib Dems could be slightly underestimated, which could see them overtake Labour, but I give Labour a 60% chance of coming second. Apart from that, the voting figures of 36/28/28 will be roughly reflected. UK polls have improved tremendously and the final polls are all very close to each other this time around.

So here’s my prediction. Let’s start with the small parties. I predict that the Greens will win Brighton Pavilion, where they will gain the boost received elsewhere by the Lib Dems, who haven’t shown much signs of campaigning in the seat, so shouldn’t siphon too many votes away from Labour and Green.

I also predict that George Galloway will pull off a win in Poplar & Limehouse, but that Labour will regain his seat of Bethnal Green & Bow, but I reckon there could be a chance that the Respect candidate could retain that seat, giving the party two seats in eastern London.

Plaid Cymru will retain their three seats, despite the redistribution reducing their numbers to two. I predict the SNP will gain seven seats. Without trying to name them, their surge of 2007-8 has receded and Labour appears to be mostly maintaining its position in Scotland, with the small protest vote against them going to the Lib Dems. Having said that, the sole Conservative MP could well lose his seat, leaving them with no seats there again.

I also predict that Sinn Fein and the SDLP will retain their seats (5 and 3 respectively), but I won’t try and make predictions about how the ten unionists seats will be split between the DUP and the UUP/Conservative alliance.

I also predict that Speaker John Bercow and the two independents will retain their seats.

As for the majors, I won’t pick exact numbers, but the Conservatives will get just short of 320 (my numbers came out as 319), Labour just short of 200 and the Lib Dems around 100, possibly slightly over.

The consequences of this result would be a hung parliament, but not one where the Lib Dems are the key powerbrokers. With the Conservatives so close to a majority the option of a Labour/Lib Dem pact is not available. In addition, the Tories would have a number of options, including the Lib Dems, the Celtic nationalists and the Northern Ireland unionists. They could stitch up a deal with the DUP, the Lib Dems, or attempt to go it alone, and wouldn’t have too much trouble getting support on each issue. You would likely see Cameron govern moderately and modestly for a year or two before calling another election when he sees the opportunity to gain a majority.

This is the scenario where the order of votes between Labour and Lib Dem will become important. While I predict the Lib Dems to win around 100 seats, you would expect a lot more seats to become marginals on the Lib Dem target list, seats where the party was not expected to win but had performed strongly. If Labour manages to come second I expect they will pull together and unite to prevent Cameron’s government from functioning with a working majority. But if the Lib Dems manage to come second they will be put in a position where an election a year or two down the track could see them challenge Labour in many more seats and eclipse them as the major force on the left in British politics.

Polls close at 10pm in the UK (7am Australian Eastern Standard Time) and I will be up to blog from then on. At that time we should see the joint BBC/ITN/Sky exit poll, and begin to see results within two hours.

Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg has managed to largely hold on to the support he gained following the first debate, although commentators disagreed about whether Clegg or Conservative leader David Cameron won the second and third debates.

The last few days of the campaign haven’t gone well for Gordon Brown, with it reaching its low point on Friday, when Brown was caught speaking into an open mic disparagingly about a voter he had just spoken to, calling her a ‘bigoted woman’. The story has dominated the news for the last two days.

In terms of the poll, a trend has been clear for the last week. The Conservatives have topped every poll for the last week, polling in the low to mid 30s. The Lib Dems have come second in most polls, closely followed by Labour. This is reflected in UK Polling Report’s polling average of CON 35, LD 28, LAB 27. Such a result would see the Conservatives win 282 seats, Labour win 250 and the Lib Dems win 86 under the uniform national swing model.

This model of calculating the effects of swings has been criticised by Nate Silver of US psephological blog FiveThirtyEight, who has produced a new sophisticated model. Silver’s model would see Labour lose far more seats, with the Conservatives winning a few more seats and the Lib Dems a lot more. Having said that, all of the projections produce a hung parliament with the Conservatives as the largest party, followed by Labour and the Lib Dems, who would gain a large number of extra seats without overtaking either major party.

Prominent UK psephobloggers Robert Ford and Anthony Wells have engaged in the debate, with Nate Silver responding, and they are well worth reading before trying to interpret the consequences of opinion polls over the next few days. While it is relatively simple to predict the general consequences of swings in elections with simple two-party races and small swings, but in such a dramatic race with massive shifts in polls, it is extremely difficult to predict the result across the constituencies.

I will be covering the election results on Friday morning Australian time as the UK results begin to flow in. I’m also expecting my UK election map to be used on the air for CNN International’s election coverage, so keep an eye out.

Four polls have been released today, showing that the vote between CON/LAB/LD is as follows:

• YouGov/Times: 33/30/29
• ComRes/Independent: 31/27/29
• ICM/Telegraph: 34/29/27
• BPIX/Mail: 31/28/32

While the order varies in all three polls, it is clear that the Liberal Democrats have jumped into contention with the other major parties. Every poll for the week before Thursday’s debate saw the Lib Dems in the 18-23% range.

It is not yet clear what effect this poll surge will have come election day. Clegg was clearly the unknown figure in the debate, and his strong performance and outsider positioning has been largely responsible for the increase in the Lib Dem vote. The two other parties have largely ignored Clegg for most of the campaign, but that has already begun to change. Will the enthusiasm from a single debate performance fade, or can the Lib Dems maintain their support by positioning themselves as a force capable of winning the election?

The Lib Dem surge isn’t solely due to a strong performance on a debate. It is rather the harnessing of years of disillusionment with the political system that reached a crescendo with the 2009 expenses crisis. Both major parties are held in very low esteem and Clegg’s message of change would have appealed to a great number of them. The Lib Dems have consistently polled in the high teens or low 20s for most of the last decade, and that strong third party force was well-placed to take advantage of such a crisis. They have the strength to be credible without being too tainted by the scandals and disillusionment.

In the past, the Liberal Democrats have performed well where voters believe that a vote for the Lib Dems is not a wasted vote. They have regularly achieved large swings in by-elections, and have been effective at using bar graphs and statistics to convince voters of their capacity to win. I am fascinated by the prospect that the storm of polls and news reporting the Lib Dems level-pegging with the major parties in national polls could convince voters that the Lib Dems could win all over the country. I would expect to see many more “we can win here” bar-graph leaflets appearing in long-shot Lib Dem target seats across the UK over the next fortnight.

The Liberal Democrat advance could still be stopped by the UK’s biased first-past-the-post electoral system. Even if the Lib Dems are on similar vote levels to the major parties, they still would win less than half the seats of either other party, and any of the above-mentioned polls would put Labour in the lead in a hung parliament, even those putting Labour in third place. If the Lib Dems were to outpoll Labour, or even outpoll both major parties, and win the smallest number of seats (even if it was double their current numbers, as would be plausible on the BPIX figures), it would raise a massive constitutional crisis. How could the Lib Dems support a major party as a minor partner in government after winning more votes than that party? Could it be the catalyst for radical constitutional and electoral reform?

The Liberal Democrats’ predecessors, the SDP-Liberal Alliance, came close to outpolling Labour at the 1983 election, polling 25% and winning 23 seats. Since then, the Lib Dems have become much smarter at targeting resources and benefiting from tactical voting by Labour and Lib Dem voters. They managed to win 62 seats in 2005 with only 22% of the vote. It is very hard to predict how their targeting strategy could work if they poll closer to 30%.

One thing is clear from the events of the last few days: Clegg has blunted David Cameron’s lead. While Cameron was not generally achieving the 10-point leads he would need to comfortably secure a majority, he has been consistently well ahead of Labour and headed for a position of largest party in a hung parliament, if not a Conservative majority. As it currently stands, it seems very unlikely either major party could win a majority, and it raises the prospect of Labour winning the largest number of seats despite being outpolled by the Conservatives and possibly the Lib Dems.

Even if Clegg’s star fades over the next eighteen days, his boost in support should be enough to insulate sitting Lib Dem MPs against the Tory assault. Clegg’s task in this election was to protect Lib Dem seats in the South from Conservative assault while making inroads into Labour territory in the big cities of the North and London. It seems quite unlikely now that the Lib Dems will suffer a net loss of seats across the country, and with their largest delegation of MPs in almost 90 years they would be a formidable presence in a new Parliament.

• Liberal Democrat, Glasgow North
• Scottish National, Glasgow North
• Labour, Oxford East
• Conservative, Derby North
• Liberal Democrat, Huntingdon
• Labour, Manchester Withington
• Plaid Cymru, Aberconwy

My favourite arguments for tactical voting, however, have to come from Brighton Pavilion, where Green Party leader Caroline Lucas and a Conservative candidate are both strong challengers to the Labour incumbent. The Labour leaflet shows the results of the 2005 election. While the Green Party have produced a leaflet showing the Greens coming first in Brighton at the European elections, they also have a remarkable leaflet arguing that left-wing voters should vote Green because the bookies say the Greens will win, and that voters shouldn’t “back a loser”.

The last word, however, has to go to the Official Monster Raving Loony Party candidate in Croydon Central:

“We should have a diverse, tolerant, pluralistic and democratic society in which there is mutual respect for a wide range of different views, cultures and lifestyles. Anybody who dares to suggest otherwise should be ruthlessly exterminated.”