United Kingdom Goes to Polls Thursday May 07,2015

 

This year marks the 750 years of the first sitting of British parliament and 800th anniversary of the signing of the Magna Carta.

Over the years, many countries have referred to and borrowed from the Westminster Model of representative democracy while drafting their constitutions; adapting to the needs and requirements of their respective demographics

Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservatives and Ed Miliband's opposition Labour Party have been neck and neck in opinion polls for months, indicating neither will win enough seats for an outright majority in the 650-seat parliament.

As campaign to elect a new Parliament and government comes to an end, the concern remains a hung Parliament forcing post poll negotiations and alliance building an integral component in government formation.

United Kingdom Independent Party (UKIP) led by Nigel Farage with its anti-EU stance has dented the Tories down south, the Scottish National Party riding on the momentum of the unsuccessful referendum has almost swept the Labour out of their Scottish strongholds.

Slowly yet steadily, when all the opinion polls are predicting a hung Parliament in the May 07,2015 elections, a sense of fait accompli seems to be percolating down. No one is expected to get a clear majority is seems in the House of Commons with 650 seats

Of the 46 million people who cast their ballot on Thursday, 4 million will be foreign-born voters. The U.K. elections this time will see more Black, Asian and Minority candidates than ever before, pointing to the growing influence of different ethnic groups in British politics.

Indian-born voters (6,15,000) make up the biggest share of the foreign-born electorate

The latest BBC "poll of polls" average puts the Conservatives at 34 percent, followed by Labour at 33 percent, the anti-EU UK Independence Party (UKIP) at 14 percent and the Liberal Democrats, who are currently junior members in a governing coalition with the Conservatives, at just 8 %

Of 7 opinion polls released on the last day before voting, three showed the two main parties tied. Three put the Conservatives ahead by a single percentage point, and one gave Labour a two-point lead

Leading pollster Peter Kellner of YouGov predicted the Conservatives would end up with 284 seats to Labour's 263, with the Scottish Nationalists on 48, Liberal Democrats 31, the anti-European Union UK Independence Party (UKIP) two, Greens one, and Welsh and Northern Irish parties 21.
If that proved correct, either of the two big parties would need support from at least two smaller ones in order to get laws through parliament
Polls open at 0600 GMT and close at 2100 GMT, with exit polls published immediately after that and the first results coming in from around midnight.

Vote tallies for the 650 seats will be announced during the night and final results are not expected until Friday afternoon.

If Prime Minister David Cameron returns to power, Britain will embark on a fraught and unpredictable discussion about its membership in the European Union(EU) leading to a referendum by the end of 2017 on whether to withdraw from the 28-nation bloc.

No country has ever left the European Union (though Greenland, an overseas territory of Denmark, voted to quit the bloc’s forerunner in 1982)

David Cameron promised the referendum as a way to placate the right wing of his Conservative Party, which has long railed against the European Union as infringing on British sovereignty and undermining national interests on hot-button topics like immigration.

If David Cameron fails to win a majority, David Cameron may seek support from Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland, which also favors a referendum, or from the centrist Liberal Democrats, whose leader, Nick Clegg, has carefully not ruled one out