UK elections: Theresa May heading for clear majority

The final general election 2017 polls - all published before polling booths opened at 7am on Thursday - have given a last minute boost to the Conservatives, after a Labour surge that saw the gap close dramatically.

Even YouGov, who have tended to estimate higher Labour support than most pollsters, recorded a three point drop for Jeremy Corbyn's party in their final poll.

The campaign has been marked by two terror attacks at London Bridge and Manchester, but neither even seems to have had an impact on the polling. The gap between the two major parties has narrowed in our poll tracker since the campaign began, however there is still a healthy deficit still left to overcome.

Theresa May's Conservatives end with an average of 43 percent in our poll tracker, while Labour sit on 36.5 percent. According to the latest forecast by the University of East Anglia's Chris Hanretty, the Conservatives would still gain a strong majority in Parliament.

Thanks to seat gains in the North of England and Scotland, Theresa May would benefit from a swing of 45 seats and end up with 375 MPs in Parliament.

At the start of the campaign some polls had the Tories at almost double the vote share of the Labour Party, indicating that the most likely outcome would be a landslide victory that would increase Theresa May's current working majority of 17 in the House of Commons.

However, May's lead dropped from 17.8 points to below seven, with a poll for The Times last week indicating just a one point gap.

While most pollsters still give the Tories a clear lead, the party's dwindling advantage was a concern to party headquarters in recent days and led to much last minute scrambling on the campaign trail.

Some experts had previously estimated that the Tories would take as many as 56 seats from Labour, leaving them with a 200-seat lead over the official opposition party, aided by Ukip's apparent collapse in popular support over recent weeks.

A healthy Tory majority is still on the cards, but Labour nowlook set to win more of the vote than they did under Ed Miliband in 2015.

Follow how the race is shaping up with The Telegraph's poll tracker, which looks at national voting intention from individual polls.

EU citizens who are unable to vote have expressed how hard it is to watch the election from the sidelines.

Jana Jaugsch, 26, from Cardiff has lived in the UK for four years with her British partner and son and is worried about the impact the result will have.

"It's not just Brexit but as a young family we are extremely concerned with the public services and the state of the country we live in," she said. "My partner is a nurse and like most NHS workers she is finding the handling of the crisis disconcerting." As a German citizen she has to wait until September to be eligible to apply for British citizenship.

Political pollsters have taken a beating recently after failing to predict a Conservative majority in 2015, a Leave vote last summer and a Donald Trump victory in November.

For those who have lost faith in polling, there is another way of predicting electoral outcomes: ask people who are prepared to put their money where their mouth is. Many now believe that political betting markets can better predict elections, relying on the wisdom of a crowd of punters to sort and weigh all the probabilities.

Coral's latest odds for the election have Mrs May as most likely to continue as Prime Minister after the election.

The Conservatives are likely to gain a series of key target seats in the General Election, capitalising on their strong position in the polls.

An analysis of the 2015 general election results by The Telegraph has shown that around 58 seats in Labour's North and Midlands heartlands are under threat due to the Brexit effect in the upcoming snap election on June 8.

There are 58 Labour-held seats where the Conservatives are fewer than 9,000 votes behind and where the constituents voted Leave in the EU referendum last June – 37 of which are located in the Midlands or in the North of England.

The seat with the narrowest Labour majority is Halifax where the Conservatives finished just 428 votes behind Labour in the 2015 general election. This seat is particularly vulnerable due to the fact that Halifax voted to Leave the EU by 60 percent.