Election Day!

Brits are going to the polls today - in droves, I hope! - to vote for their next Prime Minister and to fill contested seats in Parliament.  I've been fascinated by the whole process, and have been reading as much as possible about it all.  I just learned recently that the head of a party in Britain is automatically that party's candidate for Prime Minister - did you know that?  So different from how it works here in America (too bad, Howard Dean).

As I wrote in an earlier post about the election, I don't feel qualified to comment in too much depth about what's going on.  That being said, I do feel qualified to tell you about what I'm learning!  (Thanks especially to the Times [London] and the New York Times, which has a good basic article about the election here.)

A poll for the Times has the Tories leading with 37% of the vote, with Labour at 28% and the Lib Dems just behind at 27%.  This doesn't mean, though, that the Conservatives will will a majority in Parliament - in fact, probably no one will, and lots of tiny parties will possibly come into play.  As interesting as anything else in this nail-biter of an election is that an extraordinarily high number of voters (there are about 44 million registered voters in the UK) are still undecided.  Polls are open until 10pm, and we probably won't know the outcome until the morning.  This is all very exciting!

If you're British and registered to vote, GO VOTE!  You can't complain if you don't vote :)