The latest | The UK goes to the polls in national elections with results expected on Friday

Voters in the United Kingdom are voting in a national election to choose the 650 lawmakers who will sit in Parliament over the next five years. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak surprised his own party on May 22 when he called elections, which could have been held in January 2025.

After 14 years in power under five different prime ministers, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak The Conservatives are expected to lose to the main opposition party, the center-left Labor Party, led by Keir Starmer. Sunak’s party has struggled to reassure voters on issues such as the growing cost of living it is a crisis in the National Health Service.

The polls opened at 7am and will close at 10pm on Thursday night. Even before in-person voting began, hundreds of thousands of people voted by mail.

An exit poll commissioned by the UK’s main broadcasters will be published as soon as the polls close, giving an indication of the likely outcome.

The counting will begin immediately, but most of the results will only be announced in the early hours of Friday.

Here are the latest:

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak voted on Thursday in a national election that will determine whether he remains in office.

Sunak, who sought to bring stability to a Conservative Party in chaos when he was chosen as leader in October 2022, has spent the past six weeks trying to persuade voters across the UK to give his party another term after 14 years in power.

Pollsters and politicians expect the Labor Party to win for the first time since 2005.

Sunak’s campaign got off to a rocky start when he called an early election in torrential rain outside 10 Downing Street in May.

He was expected to wait until the fall, when expected improvements in the economy would give him a better chance.

Sunak voted shortly after the polls opened in his constituency in Yorkshire, in northern England.

British voters will choose a new government on Thursday after polls opened at 7am for a parliamentary elections which is expected to bring the opposition Labor Party to power.

In a context of economic malaise, growing distrust in government institutions and a frayed social fabric, a rebellious electorate is giving its verdict on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak Conservative Party, which has been in power since 2010.

The center-left Labor Party, led by Keir Starmerhas had a steady and significant lead in opinion polls for months, but Labor leaders have warned against taking the election result for granted, worried that their supporters will stay at home.

Sunak, for his part, has tried to rally his supporters, saying on Sunday he still thought the Conservatives could win and defending his record on the economy.