Exit poll mixes things up on election night

North Swindon, with its predictable result, was up first. But the more interesting part of the night would come later on when the picture began to emerge for the much more marginal South Swindon seat.

As the clock struck 10pm the hundreds of counters began to work their way through the thousands of postal votes received over the past few weeks.

The presence of a sound system kept the tempo up as the teams worked along to the beat.

Table leaders in bright yellow T-shirts kept the system moving like a well-oiled machine as the volunteers worked towards meeting their target of a pre-midnight declaration.

Volunteers survey the piles of ballot papers. Picture by Thomas Kelsey

Within 10 minutes the first boxes from the polling stations, 102 in total, were flooding through the doors.

Volunteers from all the parties walked up and down the rows of tables, focused intently on the piles of ballots that began to grow in front of them.

North Swindon had been widely expected to stay blue for some time, and that began to play out as soon as the ballot papers started piling up.

However the Conservatives were unable to increase their majority by as much as originally expected. In fact, it fell considerably to 8,335.

Nevertheless, a victory is a victory and rapturous applause went up as Justin Tomlinson was declared the winner once more.

Labour supporters appeared buoyed by the Tories’ reduced majority and as the clock passed midnight the question on everyone’s lips was what would happen in the South of the town.

• Town stays blue but it's tight in south

The result was called as the Adver went to press and there was palpable relief among the Tories as Robert Buckland hung on. For Labour’s Sarah Church there was delight at going so close but maybe a sense of disappointment that it was just short of the winning total.

Hanging over the evening was the official exit poll, commissioned by Sky, the BBC and ITV, which was revealed at 10pm. It predicted that the Conservatives would be the largest party but that they would fall short of a majority by 12 seats.

Labour were predicted to do far better than even they had expected.

The leader of the Swindon Labour group, Jim Grant, said that if the poll proved to be accurate it would be a “disaster” for Theresa May.

Justin Tomlinson, however, rubbished the predictions, pointing to early Tory increases in vote share and suggesting that he was still confident that Theresa May would be back in Downing Street by the morning.