On Thursday, voters in the United Kingdom go to the polls to cast their votes in the general election, and the leader of the Labour Party, Keir Starmer, is expected to show a 20-point lead over the ruling Conservative Party, according to the latest figures from the Telegraph newspaper.
Several small parties are competing to win seats in the 650-member House of Commons, including the Liberal Democrats, the Green Party, the Scottish National party, Plaid Cymru, the Democratic Unionist Party and the Reform Party, voters will head to polling stations across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The Labour Party is expected to win 431 seats in the House of Commons, while the Conservative Party is expected to get only 102 seats.
In the 2019 elections, then-prime minister Boris Johnson won 365 seats in the House of Representatives, while the Labor Party won only 202 seats, as the Labor Party seeks to regain power for the first time in 14 years.
According to tradition, the leader of the party with the largest number of seats in the House of Commons becomes prime minister.
Despite the forecasts, politicians and the Labour Party itself warn that the result is not guaranteed and that the polls may be inaccurate, as it is believed that more than 100 seats are considered too close, including those currently held by prominent conservatives such as finance minister Jeremy Hunt and Sunak himself.
Today's election is the first general election in the UK since 2019, when Boris Johnson achieved the largest victory for the Conservative Party since 1987 based on a promise to complete Brexit, but his administration was condemned by several scandals, which led to his resignation in July 2022, and was succeeded by Liz Truss, who lasted only 44 days in office before resigning due to a mini-budget crisis that shook financial markets.
Since then, Sunak, a former finance minister, has overseen a period of relative political stability as the country grappled with a cost-of-living crisis and slowing economic growth.
The legacy of 14 years of conservative rule was a major theme of the election campaign, as Sunak and Starmer sought to convince the public that their party was capable of tackling crucial issues such as housing, the National Health Service and defence.
Polling stations will be open from 7 am to 10 pm local time, ballots will be counted during the night, the results are expected to appear tomorrow morning, Friday.
Goldman Sachs expects that if the Labour Party wins a majority, we will see stronger growth in the UK in the near term and slightly higher inflation, which is likely to lead to a slight increase in wage growth and inflation. The implications for the Bank of England may be limited, but it is possible that interest rates will be cut more slowly if the Labour Party achieves a significant increase in the living wage.
