Thanks for all your questions
Our political team will answer any questions you have about the election results on Friday at 12.30pm.
You can ask your question via our form here.
A few more questions from readers below:
Q: Will the Fixed-term Parliaments Act mean that we can expect all elections to be winter elections from now on or will that act be done away with should Boris get a majority? Avi Smith, 55, Yorkshire
Both the Conservatives and Labour have vowed to scrap the FTPA if they win a majority. Regardless, elections default to May under the act so the next election is unlikely to be December again.
Q: Some former Tories are running their campaign as independents because they were expelled from the party. How are they faring overall and do they have a chance? It seems to me that in all the electoral reports their campaigns have been a bit overlooked. F Spaak, 40, PR consultant, Twente, the Netherlands
They are quite unlikely to win because all of them are running in seats with huge Tory majorities but some surveys suggest they could come second.
Q: For those of us who have to work on Friday so need to sleep but also want to catch exciting election moments live, do you have any advice on whether it’s best to stay up late or get up early? Any specific times to look out for? Chloe, 50, self-employed, Bristol
It depends how excited you are and able to cope with sleep deprivation. The exit poll published at 10pm will give a good steer about the result. But to be sure which way the result is going you probably would need to stay awake for the first bellwether seats in the early hours of the morning. It will be clear by then whether the Tories are making gains in Labour’s northern heartlands that would give them a majority. By 6am, it should be obvious who has won or whether it looks like a hung parliament unless there really is only a few seats in it.
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Jeremy Corbyn is speaking at the Labour rally now.
He says he is not here to deliver milk, or hide in a fridge.
He wants to lead a Labour government that will properly fund the NHS and social care, he says.
He praises Andy McDonald’s work as shadow transport secretary, particularly developing plans to bring rail services back into public ownership and to improve bus services.
On the NHS, he says he has been contacted by someone whose mum went into A&E on Monday, and who is now still waiting for a bed. And it is only December. What will the NHS crisis be like in January or Febuary.
Corbyn says Boris Johnson’s comments on the supposed 40 new hospitals he will build have been “a complete piece of dishonesty”. He does a brief Johnson impression (ruffling his hair and harrumphing) when he mocks Johnson’s response to his first questions on this. He says Johnson eventually gave up claiming there would be 40 new hospitals.
Under Labour, the NHS would be “not for sale”, he says. The crowd chant the phrase.
He says Labour figures have had to put up with unbelievable levels of abuse and character assassination during the 51 days of the election campaign. But he won’t do the same thing, he says.
If you wish to inhabit the gutter, that’s absolutely fine by me, but I will not be joining you there.
Photograph: Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters
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Just over 15 minutes left to ask any questions you may have on the general election. Send them in to us here.
Q: Are elderly voters less likely to come out and vote in a cold, December election and could this affect the result? Danny, Amsterdam
We won’t have much recent past data as general elections are usually in May. The conventional wisdom is that winter elections hurt Labour because their traditional voters are less likely to own a car, but this seems outdated. If it were to snow, it seems more likely this would affect the Tories, whose voters are older, and whose “get out the vote” operation is weaker than Labour’s.
Q: This election has seen a rise of dirty tactics and dishonesty from most of the parties, especially the Conservatives. These include the the fake Fact Checking incident, false smears of other parties and all the lies within adverts on Facebook etc. How can this be allowed and how come not more is being done about this? Andrew, senior designer, London
Election laws are seriously wanting when it comes to advertising and social media use. It is essentially the Wild West as there is no regulation of it. It is illegal for people to make false statements about candidates but not for parties to present misinformation. The problem is that the winning party in an election has little incentive to make better laws.
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Ian Lavery, the Labour chair, is speaking at the Labour rally now. He gets the crowd singing “Prime Minister Corbyn” to the “Oh, Jeremy Corbyn tune”.
Holding up a copy of the Labour manifesto, he says he calls it the “book of hope”.
This election is not about Brexit, he says. He says it is about the type of society we want to live in.
Britain cannot afford another five years of the Tories, or another five days, he says.
He says Boris Johnson should be kicked out of Downing Street “like a dog”.
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Laura Pidcock, the shadow employment minister, is speaking at the Labour rally.
She says Labour has campaigned with integrity. Unlike the Tories, its has not resorted to lies, she says.
She says there are still people who have not decided how to vote. Labour must show them a better world is possible.
She says Labour is campaigning on behalf of the 14.3 million people in poverty, on behalf of the 4 million children in poverty, and on behalf of the Waspi women who are entitled to receive the money they’ve lost.
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You have been sending in your questions about the general election which I will be answering until 1.30pm. You can share your questions with us via our form here.
Q: 326 is the target number of seats for a majority, but it is generally accepted it can be a bit lower than this for a party to still have a working majority. What is the minimum number of seats the Conservatives can have and still realistically expect to govern without having to rely on other parties? Martin, 29, lecturer, Wirral
The Conservatives need around 320 seats because the DUP are unlikely to play ball because of Johnson’s Brexit deal that creates a border down the Irish Sea. No other parties are keen to work with them either. There are 650 MPs – around seven Sinn Fein who do not take up their seats and four non-voting speakers. Half of that is 319.5 so the Tories are aiming for 320 as their magic number.
Q: To what extent could young voter turnout sway the election result? Alice, 23, working in tech, Brussels, Belgium
It could be crucially important. Last time, Labour took Canterbury off the Tories in a shock result attributed to the student vote. Younger voters could make the difference in Labour targets such as Putney and Chingford. Different polls have different predictions for turnout among each age group which partially accounts for wildly varying leads for the Tories of between six and 15 points.
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At the rally, Andy McDonald, the shadow transport secretary, is warming up for Labour. He says opinion is “on the move”. Labour can win this election, he says.
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Boris Johnson flew from east Midlands to Cardiff airport as he continued his election campaigning in south Wales, the Press Association reports. The PM’s flight took around 40 minutes. He has previously taken short-haul flights on the campaign, including between Doncaster Sheffield airport and Teesside, prompting criticism from Labour and climate campaigners.
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Opinion polls have generally not had a good record at recent elections, but in 2017 one exercise run by a polling company did prove remarkably successful. As well as doing conventional polling (finding a representative survey, and asking people how they will vote), YouGov also tried something called a MRP (multilevel regression and post-stratification) model, which involves getting detailed data on how particular demographics vote and then, mapping that against what is know about the demographic make-up of constituencies, trying to predict results on a constituency by constituency basis. In 2017 this was more or less the only polling exercise to predict a hung parliament, and so obviously there has been huge interest in what it is saying this time.
Last night YouGov published its second and final MRP poll for this campaign. Here is an extract from the YouGov summary by Anthony Wells.
YouGov’s latest and final general election MRP model shows the Conservative party headed for an overall majority. Predicted vote shares in our final poll have the Conservatives on 43%, Labour on 34%, the Liberal Democrats on 12% and the Brexit party on 3%.
These vote shares translate into 339 seats for the Conservatives, 231 for Labour, 41 for the SNP and 15 for the Liberal Democrats – giving the Conservatives an overall majority of 28.
Like all predictions our model comes with some uncertainty, and the margin of error here could put the final number of Conservative seats from 311 to 367. This means that we absolutely cannot rule out the 2019 election producing a hung parliament – nor can we rule out a larger Conservative majority.
And here is a chart from the detailed YouGov analysis showing which seats would change hands under this scenario.
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Some of your questions so far have been about the Green party and what will happen on 1 February:
Q: On the subject of getting Brexit done, the PM says we will come out of the EU on 31 January, but what will actually be different on 1 February? For the ordinary person, and for businesses? Bill Muskett, 66, retired, Cheshire
It will mostly be a symbolic exit as the UK will still be in transitional arrangements meaning trading relationships, free movement and links to EU institutions remain until the end of 2020 at least. Johnson has insisted a new immigration system and EU trade deal will be ready by then. If not, he can seek an extension to transition or face a cliff-edge where the UK would trade on WTO terms.
Q: Why has the Green party failed to make much impact in this election given the success of XR and acceleration of the climate breakdown? Steve, 57, lecturer, Southend
All the smaller parties have been squeezed in this election as the choice between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn is so stark that voters seem to be making decisions based on who they would rather see as prime minister.
We’re now on stop two of Jo Swinson’s tour of London and commuter-belt marginals, in Guildford – where the decision of former Tory MP Ann Milton to stand as an independent could split the Conservative vote tomorrow.
The Lib Dem leader was in a small, packed room in a village hall, where she gave assembled activists much the same message as she had half an hour down the road in Horsham – in such a volatile election, getting out the vote matters hugely.
Swinson told me at the last stop that she was hopeful the Lib Dem ground game, buoyed by local election gains in May and a record-high membership, could be crucial.
She also said she would enjoy a nervy election night all the more if tactical voting saw the Lib Dems eject some high-profile Brexiter MPs (she began the day in Dominic Raab’s seat): “I think it’s fair to say that would certainly be the case.”
Peter Walker
(@peterwalker99)Stop two of Swinson’s last-day bus tour and we have another gathering of local activists in another car park – this time in Guildford, where the Lib Dems hope the decision of ex-MP Ann Milton to stand as an independent could split the Tory vote. pic.twitter.com/wqatKhIGi3
Peter Walker
(@peterwalker99)Swinson is now addressing the local activists in a tiny village hall. This through-a-window view was the closest I could get amid the massed camera crews. pic.twitter.com/s0XzOFOWeV
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I’m Rowena Mason, deputy political editor for the Guardian, and I will be answering any questions you have on the general election today. I have written about Westminster politics for eight years, covering three elections and two referendums. During this election, I have been tracking the Tories since Boris Johnson’s first stump speech in Birmingham.
If you have a question you can send it to us by filling in the form here.
A last-minute push for tactical voting has seen one Lib Dem candidate in a highly marginal seat effectively endorse his Labour opponent, advising local people to support him to avoid the constituency falling to the Conservatives.
In a series of tweets, Brendan Devlin said that while he could not support either Labour or Jeremy Corbyn, the incumbent Labour MP, Paul Williams, was “an honest, sincere man, and if I needed help, I know he’s reliable and committed to social justice”. He added:
To be crystal clear: vote tactically for someone who cares about the NHS and social care. Those are important in Stockton South.
Brendan Michael William Devlin
(@BrendanDevlin50)To be crystal clear: vote tactically for someone who cares about the NHS and social care. Those are important in Stockton South.
The 2017 election saw Williams defeat the Conservatives by just 888 votes, but polling for Thursday’s election puts the Tories marginally ahead.
Stockton South is one of the seats being highlighted by Vote for a Final Say, an anti-Brexit campaign group which is urging people to vote tactically, and has called for a series of Labour and Lib Dem candidates to step aside where polling suggests they are in third place in a marginal constituency – with Devlin among them.
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