Britain is heading for a hung parliament with the Conservatives the largest party, according to a TV exit poll.
Tory leader David Cameron was left tantalisingly close to the door of Downing Street with his party on 307 seats - 19 short of an overall majority. Gordon Brown's Labour would have 255 seats and Nick Clegg's Liberal Democrats would have 59 seats, according to the poll.
The BBC/ITV News/Sky News poll interviewed 18,000 voters, who had already cast their ballot, at 130 polling stations across the UK.
If the poll was mirrored in actual results, it would mean the Liberal Democrats would have made no progress since the 2005 election despite Mr Clegg's strong campaign. Thursday's closely-fought poll was inevitably seen as a verdict on Labour's 13 years in power, and the premier's three years in office.
It was billed as the most nail-biting election since 1992, when John Major defied predictions of a hung parliament to secure a Conservative majority. And it followed an apparent surge of support for the Lib Dems after the first of the three TV election debates between the candidates for No 10, which featured for the first time in a British election.
That confounded the expectations of a smooth path to victory for Mr Cameron's Tories. But if the exit poll is right, the Lib Dem bubble has burst and the party was unable to translate opinion poll ratings into Westminster seats. The three party leaders were in predictably buoyant mood as they cast their votes earlier today, although Tory leader David Cameron's arrival at his local polling station was delayed by more than two hours after pranksters scaled its roof.
More than 44 million people were registered to vote for the 650 MPs of the new Parliament, with polling stations open from 7am until 10pm. Voters were also electing councillors in 166 local authorities across England.
Responding to the exit poll, Labour's deputy leader Harriet Harman told BBC News: "It's obviously going to be very close. What is clear is that the country is going to need a strong and stable government to take us through the recession. And the country hasn't turned overwhelmingly to the Conservatives and given them the trust and confidence ... predicted a year or so ago."
Liberal Democrat deputy leader Vince Cable described the outcome of the exit poll as "very strange" and insisted they had been "horribly wrong" in the past. Conservative Party chairman Eric Pickles told ITV: "I think we're going to see a very interesting night.
"If I was a member of the public, I would be staying up all night because I think we are going to see things that occur above what you are saying and things that are going to occur below.And I think we are going to see an enormous amount of churning between the political parties."
-Yahoo UK News
