Last Updated: Wednesday, 11 May, 2005, 15:19 GMT 16:19 UK
Election 2005 at-a-glance
All you need to know about the general election night, at-a-glance:
Tony Blair says he has listened and learned during the election campaign and will focus on the public's priorities in his third term.
Michael Howard announces he is to step down as leader of the Conservatives before the next election
Charles Kennedy pledges to hold Labour to account as the "real alternative" in the next Parliament.
Election watchdogs have demanded new safeguards to prevent postal voting fraud which they say has undermined confidence in the electoral system.
In Sedgefield, Reg Keys, the father of a military policeman killed in Iraq, records more than 10% of the vote, with 4,252.
David Trimble announces he is to resign as leader of the Ulster Unionist Party after the party loses four seats - including his own.
The Respect Party's George Galloway takes the Labour safe seat of Bethnal Green & Bow in east London.
Shadow education secretary Tim Collins loses his Westmorland and Lonsdale seat to the Liberal Democrats, but three other potentially vulnerable top Tories, Oliver Letwin, Theresa May and David Davis, hold on to theirs (Dorset West, Maidenhead, and Haltemprice and Howden).
Despite fears of a Muslim anti-war backlash, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw holds on to his Blackburn seat with only a slightly reduced majority.
Individual seats with massive swings include Manchester Withington, which had a 17.3% swing from Labour to Lib Dem, and Cambridge, which had a 15% swing from Labour to Lib Dem.
Several junior Labour ministers lose their seats to the Conservatives: Schools minister Stephen Twigg - who won Enfield Southgate from Tory Michael Portillo in 1997; Chris Leslie, constitutional affairs minister, in Shipley; junior health minister Melanie Johnson, in Welwyn Hatfield.
Robert Kilroy-Silk, the leader of new party, Veritas, fails to win Erewash from Labour, polling just under 3,000 - only 6% of the vote.
In Cardiff North (held by Labour), Catherine Taylor-Dawson of Vote for Yourself Rainbow Dream Ticket wins just one vote - although she also stood in the three other Cardiff seats where she had more success (37 in Central, 79 in South, and 167 in West).
Outspoken Labour MP Bob Marshall-Andrews, after announcing that he will lose his seat and blaming the prime minister and the Iraq war, holds onto Medway with a majority of 213.
Labour loses three key marginal seats in Scotland - Western Isles and Dundee East to the SNP, and East Dunbartonshire to 25-year-old Lib Dem Jo Swinson, who becomes the youngest MP.
The SNP increases its number of seats from four to six.
Plaid Cymru goes down from four seats to three.
Labour's election coordinator Alan Milburn - who was health secretary from 1999 to 2003 but quit to spend more time with his family - rules out a return to the Cabinet.
The Green Party, while not winning any seats, have won 3.5% of the vote where they have stood, up 0.9% on places where they stood in 2001. They won 22% in Brighton Pavilion.
The UK Independence Party fails to make a breakthrough in the election, despite its biggest ever campaign.
The British National Party has slightly increased its share of the vote, but failed to take any seats.
Labour loses Blaenau Gwent, its safest Welsh seat and previously held by Aneurin Bevan and Michael Foot, to independent Peter Law (majority 9,121), who quit the Labour party in protest against the imposition of an all-women shortlist.
Dr Richard Taylor, Independent Kidderminster Hospital and Health
Concern, holds his seat in Wyre Forest with a reduced majority of 5,250.
Police are called to a polling station in Watton, south west Norfolk, as would-be voters claim it was closed before they got a chance to vote.
Sunderland South wins the race to be first with its election result for a record fourth consecutive poll - Labour's Chris Mullin holds the seat.
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