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the new statesman The New Statesman.

Statesman.

Hello, I'm Hannah Barnes, associate editor at the New Statesman and you're listening to the New Statesman

podcast. Throughout this election campaign we've brought you daily episodes of

the podcast with updates on party policy announcements, reaction from around the UK and the best polling

analysis from our experts and we're going to be continuing to do so over the next few

weeks as the country reacts to the general election result. It is the 4th of July.

Election day is finally here and the UK is heading to the polls by the early hours of

tomorrow morning a new government should be announced and if you haven't done so already please do exercise your democratic right to vote millions around the world don't have it and don't forget to take your ID with you. I'm joined in the

studio today by the new statesman's associate political editor Rachel Kunliff and

down the line from Chester by senior data journalist Ben Walker.

So before we turn to what we can expect this evening as the night unrevels, let's just

take you through how things stood, or at least were predicted to be be before the polls open this morning.

...