Bill Rammell wins Harlow by just 97 votes (more on that later…) giving Labour 356 seats in Parliament. With the single remaining undecided seat, Staffordshire South, to be elected next month, and almost certainly to return a Conservative MP, that means Labour’s majority for the coming Parliament is 66…which means the winner of the election sweepstake is… Jess. So congratulations to her.

After last night’s marathon session in front of the television, I spent today experimenting with some screenscraping - et voila! The UK Election Map has been updated with the 2005 results, allowing you to make comparisons between the 2001 and 2005 elections.

The above picture shows Merseyside & North Wales, and the loss of votes in core Labour seats to the Lib Dems (as the seats have become more orange and yellow), and the Tory gains in marginal seats (which have become less pink and more purple/blue). Please report any errors (done in a bit of a hurry). Do note that the election in Staffordshire South will be run next month following the death of a candidate and so the constituency is blank at the moment.

Having returned to the land of the living after six hours’ sleep, it looks like business as usual. The Lib Dems have lost a couple more seats to the Tories, Labour still haven’t gained a single seat (you’d think they might pick up the odd anomalous one or two, but no). They now stand on 353 seats - that’s a majority of 60. 622 of the seats declared, excluding the 18 seats in Northern Ireland that means we’re only waiting on 6 more to come in.

Looking at the Lib Dems’ targets - although they have won seats and got a bigger share of the vote - most of the increase in the vote was in Labour seats, while most of their targets looked to be Conservative. They have taken very few off the Tories - many of them have in fact swung the other way. Their current total of 61 seats, while a gain of 10 on 2001, is only 7 more than the 54 they had when Parliament dissolved. While that’s still positive that’s not the massive breakthrough we expected; I would be pleased, but not overjoyed if I were a Lib Dem supporter.

The main other winners out of this are the Conservatives, who have won some seats, and achieved swings in many others to create a solid base to build on for 2009/10. Another winner, at least on their own terms, is Respect. Yes, they’re a jumped-up party who will probably not be around in five years’ time, but they got what they came for, which was Galloway’s win in Bethnal Green. Sadly, what’s even worse is that the “threat” they pose, which extends to little more than areas with a significant Muslim vote (and even then, they only recorded 20% of the vote in West Ham and East Ham), which is hyped by both themselves and the pro-war left, will now seem even greater. Only 68,000 people voted for them nationwide, which isn’t that much more than the 57,000 who voted Socialist Alliance in 2001. Meanwhile, off everyone else’s radar, the BNP have managed to quadruple their nationwide vote - nearly 200,000 votes this time compared to 47,000 in 2001.

For definite. 4,300 majority - that’s one hell of a swing (15%) from Labour to Lib Dem. The student vote (in 2001 the election was slap bang in the middle of exams) was no doubt one factor, but even that can’t take all of it into account, surely. I feel sorry for Anne Campbell, she didn’t have a perfect voting record but she was one of the better Labour MPs, and (from the two occasions I met her), a nice person to boot.

And with that, I am going to bed. Sorry for polluting the blog with a million entries. Normal service to resume at some point.

Some marginals trickling in now…Bob Marshall-Andrews retains Medway, the Lib Dems sneak Westmorland off the Conservatives’ Tim Collins (perhaps their most senior casualty), but the Tories have just grabbed a clutch of marginals off Labour. In all, if I were from either opposition party I’d be pleased - the Lib Dems lost just three seats and gained 14 (so far). Cambridge is still to come, it’s very close there from what I hear, with the Lib Dems threatening to take the seat. And to be honest, Labour can’t be too displeased, given how dire it was looking earlier on they’ve managed to retain some marginals (such as Dorset South, just now).

Galloway won.

And he’s still bitter about it! Ranting at the returning officer! What’s wrong with the man?

Update: His row with Paxman was hilarious, both of them sleep-addled and spoiling for a fight. I hope the BBC repeat it on their website for everyone else.

Also - shit, it’s dawn! And still no Cambridge result.

Good to see that the Monster Raving Loony Party got more than Rodney Hylton-Potts in Folkestone. Michael Howard’s lip-synching was a bit out of sorts, and he looks curiously botoxed.

Labour have just won Corby, making it 324 seats and government.

Bethnal Green still not there. What’s going on?

Two seats I have a connection to - Bethnal Green & Bow (my birthplace) and Cambridge (where I lived for 5 years) still haven’t declared - Respect and the Lib Dems rumoured in each to be poised to take them off Labour. Starting to get a bit irritable.

Nine seats to a Labour government, by the looks of things. They have not gained a single seat on 2001; the only ‘gain’ they have is Leicester South, which the Lib Dems won in a 2004 by-election.