Results of the United Kingdom general election of 2015

The results are in and they are not what anybody was expecting. A close election had been anticipated between the Labour and Conservative parties, as well as another hung Parliament. As it turned out, Labour lost significant ground and several of its high-profile members were voted out while the Conservatives surprised everyone by obtaining a majority in the House of Commons, albeit a narrow and vulnerable one.

After the results were clear, Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage all resigned as the heads of their parties (Labour, Liberal Democrat and United Kingdom Independence Party, respectively). Labour endured a net loss of 26 seats, the Liberal Democrats lost 49 (down to 8) and UKIP, while actually achieving its best election result to date (third in the popular vote), only won one seat and Farage promised to resign if he didn't win in his target constituency of South Thanet.

Besides the outright Conservative win, the other surprise of the election is the strength of the Scottish National Party victories in Scotland. Scotland has long been a Labour stronghold but the SNP, led by Nicola Sturgeon, was successful in securing 56 of 59 seats up there, which is the highest amount of MPs the party has possessed to date. Labour's losses in Scotland were only partially offset by Liberal Democrat defeats elsewhere in the nation.

The Greens surpassed the one-million-votes mark for the first time in a general election and placed sixth overall in the popular vote; however, the Greens, as with UKIP, only have one MP, which is the seat they won in 2010: Brighton Pavilion, held by Caroline Lucas. The British National Party was fifth in the popular vote in 2010 but was reduced to irrelevancy in this election.

The next general election is expected to be in 2020, as set by the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, unless a motion of no confidence passes against the government, which would trigger an early election.