The Latest | The UK goes to the polls in a national election with results expected early Friday

Voters in the U.K. are casting their ballots in a national election to choose the 650 lawmakers who will sit in Parliament for the next five years. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak surprised his own party on May 22 when he called the election, which could have taken place as late as January 2025.

After 14 years in power under five different prime ministers, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak ’s Conservatives are widely expected to lose to the main opposition party, the left-of-center Labour Party led by Keir Starmer. Sunak's party has struggled to reassure voters on issues including the rising cost of living and a crisis in the National Health Service.

Polls opened at 7 a.m. and will close at 10 p.m. on Thursday night. Even before in-person voting began, hundreds of thousands of people had cast their ballot by postal vote.

An exit poll commissioned by the main U.K. broadcasters will be published as soon as the polls close, giving an indication of the likely result.

Counting will begin immediately but most of the results will only be announced in the early hours of Friday.

Here's the latest:

Labour Party leader Keir Starmer voted Thursday in an election that is widely expected to return his party to power for the first time in 14 years and make him prime minister.

Starmer, who has warned his supporters not to take the election for granted despite polls and politicians predicting a landslide, voted in his London neighborhood.

Pollsters have given Labour a double-digit lead since before the campaign began six weeks ago.

Starmer has spent his time criss-crossing Britain and urging voters to vote for change.

He has pledged to revive a sluggish economy, invest in the nation’s crumbling infrastructure and repair the broken National Health Service, which his center-left party founded in 1945.

Scottish National Party leader John Swinney has voted as his party fights to hold off a wave of support from the rival Labour Party.

Swinney, who became the SNP’s third leader in just over a year in May, has tried to bring stability to a party in turmoil.

Scotland’s long-serving First Minister Nicola Sturgeon abruptly stepped down last year during a campaign finance investigation that eventually led to criminal charges against her husband, who was the party’s chief executive.

Swinney joined the party at 15 years old, and previously led the party from 2000 to 2004.

Swinney has said that if his party wins a majority of seats in Scotland he will try to open Scottish independence negotiations with the London-based U.K. government. He wants to rejoin the European Union and the European single market.

Swinney walked to the polls in Burrelton Village Hall, Perthshire, with his 13-year-old son Matthew.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak cast his ballot Thursday in a national election that will determine if he remains in office.

Sunak, who tried to bring stability to a Conservative Party in chaos when he was picked as leader in October 2022, spent the past six weeks trying to persuade voters across the U.K. to give his party another term after 14 years in power.

Pollsters and politicians widely expect the Labour Party to win for the first time since 2005.

Sunak’s campaign got off to a soggy start when he called the snap election in a downpour outside 10 Downing Street in May.

He had been expected to wait until the fall, when expected improvements in the economy would give him a better chance.

Sunak voted shortly after polls opened in his constituency in Yorkshire in northern England.

British voters are picking a new government on Thursday after polls opened at 7 a.m. for a parliamentary election that is widely expected to bring the opposition Labour Party to power.

Against a backdrop of economic malaise, mounting distrust of government institutions and a fraying social fabric, a fractious electorate is delivering its verdict on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party, which has been in power since 2010.

The center-left Labour Party, led by Keir Starmer, has had a steady and significant lead in opinion polls for months, but Labour leaders have warned against taking the election result for granted, worried their supporters will stay home.

Sunak, for his part, has tried to rally his supporters, saying on Sunday that he still thought the Conservatives could win and defending his record on the economy.