Get ready for the General Election – your candidates, what they say and when we will know the results

Tomorrow (July 4) the country will vote in the General Election to select their constituency MPs and the party with the largest number of seats returned will form the new Government.

This year the boundaries for Thanet have changed.

The former South Thanet and North Thanet constituencies no longer exist. They have been replaced by East Thanet which takes in Ramsgate, Broadstairs and most of Margate and the Herne Bay and Sandwich constituency which includes Westbrook, Birchington, Garlinge, Thanet villages wards and Westgate.

The candidates are:

Herne Bay and Sandwich constituency

Thea Barrett – Green Party – read here

Angie Curwen – Liberal Democrats – read here

Roger Gale – The Conservative Party – read here

Amelia Randall – Reform UK – read here

Helen Elizabeth Whitehead – Labour Party – read here

East Thanet constituency

Polly Billington Labour – read here

Grahame Birchall Independent – read here

Helen Harrison Conservative – read here

Paul Holton Independent – read here

Steve Roberts Green – read here

Mo Shafaei Independent – statement can be found here

Jai Singh Liberal Democrat –read here

Paul Webb Reform UK – read here

Polling stations open tomorrow at 7am and close at 10pm. The count will then take place from that point. For East Thanet this will be done at St George’s School from around 11pm.

The Herne Bay and Sandwich seat will be dealt with by Canterbury City Council with the count at Westgate Hall, this is not predicted to start until 2am.

Nationally Electoral Calculus is predicting a Labour majority of 290. It currently has an estimate of Conservatives taking 61 seats, Labour 470, Lib Dem 71, Reform 7, Green 3, SNP 15, PlaidC 3. Remaining seats are predicted to go to parties such as DUP and Alliance. (Updated figures due to error).

YouGov has slightly different predictions with:

Labour projected to win 431 seats
Conservatives set to drop to worst ever result, winning only 102 seats
Liberal Democrats on course to win record 72 seats
Reform UK to win three seats, including Nigel Farage in Clacton
Greens to win second seat in Bristol Central
SNP set to be pushed into second place in Scotland, winning 18 seats
Labour to take 32 seats in Scotland
Conservatives face wipeouts in North East, North West and Wales
Tories pushed into third place in the South West
Eighty-nine seats remain ‘tossups’

YouGov says the implied national vote shares are Labour 39%, Conservative 22%, Reform UK 15%, Liberal Democrat 12%, Greens 7%, the SNP 3% and Plaid Cymru 1%.

For East Thanet the poll predicts Labours chances of winning as a huge 94% with Reform’s chance listed as 5% and Conservative as just 1%.

The Calculus picture for Herne Bay and Sandwich (inclusive of some Thanet areas) currently stands at a 67% chance for Conservative, Labour 24% and Reform 9%.

The exit poll will be announced at 10pm tomorrow, just as voting ends and polling stations across the country close.

The poll gives a snapshot of what to expect prior to the results coming in. The poll is a survey of in-person voters taken at a sample of around 150 constituencies in England, Scotland and Wales. Exit polls have taken place in various forms since 1974, and have correctly predicted the largest party on every occasion.

Most area results are expected in the early hours of Friday morning with the final seats projected to come in by 7am. The prediction for the East Thanet result is for around 3am. For Herne Bay and Sandwich results are predicted to come in at 5.30am.