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It's finally here. Election week has arrived and you might have some questions about how the whole process will unfold
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So we thought we'd answer them for you. So on Thursday, July 4th, you'll be wanting to know where you can go to cast your vote if you haven't already submitted a postal ballot that is
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On your polling card, which will arrive at your house sent by your council, it usually has the details of your local polling station
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And if not, you can easily find them online on your council website. You won't need to take the pollen card with you to cast your vote, although
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some people do, but you will need to bring photo ID, which is a new requirement in this general election
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So something that's a bit surprising is on election day, you won't really see any political coverage
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especially on broadcast TV, radio, online videos, because broadcasters are not allowed to publish
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or broadcast anything which could influence the way people vote. Kind of a sensible policy, really
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So it's kind of radio silence until 10pm on election night when the exit poll drops
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The exit poll is essentially a poll taken of how people have actually voted
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You'll have people standing at polling stations, some polling stations across the country
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and they will essentially ask people, are you happy to share how you voted
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Because the votes now in the past, so they can, if they're happy to, they can share the details of that
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And from those samples, we're able to gather a picture of how things are likely to look once all the votes have been counted
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So this can be a number of things. We will see results trickling in over the night. By about 3, 4 a.m., we're going to be getting that real flood of results coming in from constituencies all over the country
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What we can roughly expect is maybe by 6 7 a something like that we might expect to have a general picture of across most of the country how the majority for which party is one is shaping up However nothing is certain and I don have
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a crystal wall to predict the future. So we don't know for sure. We don't know whether there
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are going to be recounts called in specific seats where there have been issues with the way
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polls have been cast or ballots have been counted. That could slow the process down and ultimately
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it's not looking like the most likely outcome, but if the option of a hung parliament was to emerge
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on into Friday morning, that would then take a lot of conversations between the parties about
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who could form a government. So ultimately, we don't really know for sure, but usually by about
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6 or 7 a.m., we have a rough idea of how the next few hours at least are going to go
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So the way we count votes in the UK is through the first past the post voting system. It's
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quite a simple system. Essentially, in every constituency, the candidate who gets the most votes
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more than any other, they win the seat, they're elected to Parliament, and they form a part of their
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party's majority in the House of Commons. It's quite simple, but obviously there are some
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issues with it because a lot of other people in that seat and seats across the country
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if they vote for the candidate who doesn't win, they could vote up to 49% to other candidates
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and they won't get any representation for their vote in Parliament. So it can lead to some people
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feeling their vote's essentially been wasted, it won't be reflected in the makeup of the chamber
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There's so many ways to keep up to date with everything that's happening throughout the night, whether you're staying up or getting up very early to find out what flavour of government
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we are waking up to BBC, Sky News, Channel 4, ITV, Times Radio. All of these broadcasters will have
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their election coverage on throughout the hours of the night. However, there's also another
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very easy way to keep up to date with everything, especially here in London, and that's through
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6am's live blog. And of course, I'll be accounts in London throughout the night, bringing you
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all the colour as results come in. So like and subscribe to keep up to date
