London: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is set to remain in power with an exit poll on Thursday showing his Conservative Party headed for a clear majority in parliament in the 2019 general election.
The Conservatives are expected to win 368 seats, according to the national exit poll released soon after voting stations around the U.K. closed at 10 p.m. London time. The party needs 322 seats to control Parliament and push through Johnson's Brexit plan.
A victory for Johnson and the Conservatives means that they will plow forward with the Brexit dashing all chances of a second referendum -- of remaining in the European Union. And by January, one of the prominent partners in one of Europe's postwar political and trade bloc will go its own way.
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A Conservative majority has been anyway widely anticipated as opinion polls through much of the six-week campaign showed the party with a steady lead.
A final major poll published Tuesday night by YouGov predicted the Conservatives would win with a 28-seat majority. The pollster said the prediction was within the margin of error and warned that a hung Parliament or an even larger Conservative majority is still a possibility.
The polls opened on Thursday at 7 a.m. in the predawn darkness. The weather forecast was grey, wet and relatively miserable.
This was Britain's third general election in a little more than four years, and the second since the June 2016 Brexit referendum.
While Brexit was dominant in many voters' minds on Thursday, this was not purely a Brexit election.
