Voting is under way in the tightest general election for decades as Britain looks set for second successive hung parliament.
Ed Miliband, Nigel Farage and Nicola Sturgeon all cast their votes within the first hour of polls opening, while the prime minister, David Cameron, made a last-minute YouTube appeal for support.
Cameron’s 48-second message continued the Conservatives’ campaign theme of raising the spectre of Miliband as prime minister propped up by the Scottish National party.
“If you want to stop Ed Miliband and the SNP from getting into power and wrecking our economy ... and if you want me back on work on Friday working through our long-term economic plan as your prime minister then it is vital that you vote Conservative,” Cameron said.
#VoteConservative today - and together, we can secure a brighter future for Britain. https://t.co/t896F6oMoM
— David Cameron (@David_Cameron) May 7, 2015
Cameron’s message was echoed by the Daily Telegraph which emailed its readers pleading with them to back the Conservatives.
Slightly creepy "unprecedented" email from @Telegraph editor Chris Evans telling me to vote Conservative pic.twitter.com/sM42Czi6jm
— Toby Harnden (@tobyharnden) May 7, 2015
Meanwhile, a nervous but excited looking Miliband cast his vote in Sutton village hall, moments from his constituency home in Doncaster North.
Holding his wife Justine Thornton’s hand, he said “morning” to other voters, but otherwise it was a silent trip.
There was similar scenes moments later in Ballieston, Glasgow East, where Sturgeon cast her vote with her husband and SNP chief executive, Peter Murrell.
As she left, the SNP leader said the decision was up to the people of Scotland, then joked with photographers as they begged for one more shot of her alone. “Yeah, get out my shot!” she told her husband, as he retreated to the side.
Nicola Sturgeon arrives to vote with husband and SNP chief executive Peter Murrell https://t.co/vStTEokbou
— Libby Brooks (@libby_brooks) May 7, 2015
The Scottish Labour party made a last-ditch attempt to stop the SNP surge that threatens to wipe out the party’s strongholds in Scotland by putting out its own YouTube appeal for votes. It featured more from Labour’s previous leader Gordon Brown than his successor. “Only a Labour government can prevent five more years of bedroom tax poverty,” it quoted the former prime minister saying.
Help deliver a Labour government today. https://t.co/kTN5bRYIYs
— Scottish Labour (@scottishlabour) May 7, 2015
The Ukip leader, Nigel Farage, gave a thumbs up to the cameras as he cast his vote in Ramsgate. He has repeatedly said that he will stand down as leader if he fails to win the South Thanet seat.
I can't tell you who I voted for! #VoteUKIP #GE2015 #IVoted pic.twitter.com/8SQgJ1nbPJ
— Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) May 7, 2015
With millions of voters apparently still undecided or open to changing their minds, the new Westminster balance of power remained unclear. Among the last set of polls, three showed the main parties level-pegging, three had the Conservatives in front by a single point and one gave Labour a two-point advantage.
According to preliminary results of the final Guardian/ICM campaign poll, Labour and the Conservatives were tied at 35% each. A YouGov poll in Scotland for the Times show Sturgeon’s party – with which Miliband has ruled out any formal deal – enjoying 48% of support to Labour’s 28%, putting several key figures, including the Scottish Labour leader, Jim Murphy, in peril of losing their seats.
Sturgeon said her party was “within touching distance” of winning a majority of Scottish seats at Westminster for the first time and being able to make sure “the voice of Scotland is going to be heard more loudly at Westminster than it has ever been heard before”.
She has appealed to Labour to join forces to “lock out” the Conservatives but warned her MPs would vote down a future Labour budget if it failed to end “Tory austerity” – a threat that has been seized on by the Tories as a central theme of its campaign.
Nick Clegg, who faces a fight to hold on to his own Sheffield Hallam seat, urged voters to stick with the Lib Dems as the only party able to provide a “stable” influence in a Tory or Labour administration. He said his party’s performance will be the “surprise story” of polling day, dismissing predictions of an electoral mauling that has left key figures such as cabinet minister Danny Alexander vulnerable to a collapse in support after five years of governing in coalition with the Conservatives.
The Green party will also hope to increase its parliamentary presence, heavily targeting three seats in a push to underline the increasingly fractured political makeup of the electorate.
In a final plea to people to vote Labour, Miliband will say: “If you do that today, then tomorrow you won’t have to wake up to the news that five years of the Tories has turned into a Tory decade – a decade where only the privileged few will do well, where there will be one rule for a few and another for everyone else. So the stakes are high in these crucial hours.”
He said the Tories planned “the most extreme spending cuts of any political party for a generation” that posed “a clear and present danger to the family finances of working people”.
Polling stations will be open until 10pm on Thursday in what will be the busiest election day since 1979, with nearly 10,000 council seats also up for grabs.
