** Official MN Election Night Thread - let's hold hands and wait together **

[MmeLindt]

Just starting this so that we can all post our thoughts throughout the day.

My wish for today is that as many people as possible GO OUT AND VOTE.

I cannot vote as I have been living abroad for over 15 years so if anyone wants to vote for me, I would like to vote for Gordon Brown. Voting by MN proxy

Think the real Lib Dem result will be higher than the exit poll shows, and mainly at Labour's expense.

haha just admitted it's been revised

Ah, now I see. It IS an updated exit poll

remember sky have big input into exit polls.

They must have wanted to go 'shazam' with at at ten pm as soon as the polls closed, and hadn't quite finished counting it properly! Assuming that's the final version now.

Well they have said it is revised. So was it an exit poll in the first place then?

But now that the exit poll result is out, how can they still allow people to keep voting? Surely that goes against all the rules?

What they hell are they supposed to do about the polling. It's tough luck surely? You have all day, why leave it till after the pub?

It will have been an exit poll, but they might not have polled everyone who exited, if people were still voting.

Sad that so many people have been unable to vote. They may have been unable previously in the day due to work committments. Maybe people need to get more organised with postal votes.

I'm confused. (again) Surely all these people haven't been queueing all day?! In which case why all the talk of 'a disgrace' and 'there should be an enquiry'? If you wanted to vote, you had all bloody day to do it! Why expect to pop in at a minute to 10?

I see that the Labour candidate in the Sunderland seat just declared went to Hertford College, Oxford.

Not criticising her for that but I see that going to Oxford is not just limited to Tory Toffs then.

shocking that people turned away from voting cos of queues. in the states if you are in the queue when election closes you can vote.
not a democracy this.

(sorry not aimed at anyone here - just tge talk on the beeb.)

I think its shocking that people already queueing well before 10pm were turned away. On tv they all look like young possibly first time voters? Its a real shame. There was a huge drive to increase voter registration and we already knew at least 500 thousand extra had registered surely someone could have predicted this?

I liked that hexagon graphic, makes much more sense. Mariella Frostrup's talking some sense.

it'll be interesting to see though how long some of them were queuing 200 people is quite a lot.....so they may not have turned up at 9.50

It is odd that they shouldn't be allowed to vote.

They keep polls open in almost every country in the world if there are people queueing.

What a mess now with people queuing and not getting to vote. I'm worried that this will delay the final result, with people refusing to recognise the count in some constituencies. Nightmare. They won't be able to re-run the polling so I don't know what will happen.

Gaelicsheep I don't see how they can let people vote after the exit poll was announced either. What a cock up.

i voted at 1pm, was empty then, saw a lot more people going in at about 7pm when I took the kids to youth club, why have people left it so late?

The BBC seem to have made rather a mess of their technology, haven't they?

Sparkly - quite possibly work commitments - I voted at 12........but I was sat at home twiddling my thumbs the rest of the day (ok not really but you know what I mean). I guess that's why they've traditionally been open until 10pm;.......to give those people who don't get a chance to vote until later in the evening to vote

Hmm you're probably right t&f. I hadn't thought like that.

cos its not usually a problem Sparkly. never known this before.

mumofoscar - people may have been at work all day and only had chance to go in the last hour before closing. There was a MNetter who was going to be in this position (and could well have ended up queuing and missing out) until her school cancelled parent's evening. DShe would have had no choice but to go last minute.