The exit poll in the British election shows a big lead for the Conservative party, which it projects (with a stated margin of error of 10 seats) of 316 seats to only 239 for Labour. The Liberal Democrats, the Conservatives’ coalition partner for the last five years, are projected to win only 10 seats — down from 57 in 2010. The Scottish National party is projected to win 58 of Scotland’s 59 votes — which means that Labour has lost 40 of the 41 seats that they had won five years ago.
The conventional wisdom was that this election was going to be very close. Conservatives and Labour were tied, within the margin of error, in polls throughout the campaign season that began when Parliament was dissolved March 30. But if the exit poll is correct — and I emphasize if — then Conservatives will have won 10 more seats than they did in 2010 and Labour will have won 19 fewer seats than they won then.
Labour leader Ed Miliband campaigned on a left-wing platform calling for economic redistribution. If the exit poll is right, then this was not a winning strategy, as I suggested in my most recent Washington Examiner column.
