Voters across the UK are having their say at the polls today
As polling stations across the country prepare to close their doors after a day of democratic action, many will wonder if an exit poll will emerge in the coming hours to give people a sense of who has won and who has lost.
Millions of people have ventured to the polls today to vote for 1,631 council seats, 23 county, unitary and metropolitan councils, and six directly elected mayors.
Of the 23 local authorities holding elections, 14 are county councils: Cambridgeshire, Derbyshire, Devon, Gloucestershire, Hertfordshire, Kent, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire.
The others are the unitary authorities of Buckinghamshire, Cornwall, Durham, North Northamptonshire, Northumberland, Shropshire, West Northamptonshire and Wiltshire, plus Doncaster Metropolitan Council.
Every seat on all of the combined 23 authorities is up for grabs, but boundary changes mean some areas will be electing fewer councillors than before.
The six mayoral elections include four combined authority mayors in Greater Lincolnshire, Hull and East Yorkshire, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, West of England, plus two Metropolitan Borough Mayors in Doncaster and North Tyneside
Voters living in the constituency of Runcorn and Helsby, in Cheshire, have been tasked with choosing a new MP after former MP Mike Amesbury stood down after being given a prison sentence for assaulting a constituent.
While the first stream of results will start to emerge from around 2am on Friday, Brits will be eager to find out who the big winners are as soon as possible.
Unfortunately, there is no exit poll for a local election, so the situation won’t become clear until ballot boxes are opened and the votes start getting totted up.
In a general election, the exit poll, compiled through interviews with voters as they leave polling stations, reveals the predicted results as soon as the voting ends and it is usually pretty accurate at revealing whether there will be a majority government or a hung parliament.
But during local elections, voters have to wait for the results to find out what the political landscape will look like following the contests.
Local elections usually have a much lower turnout, rarely reaching above 40 per cent, making them harder to predict.
To find out what time each local council election result is due, click here.
