British Pound Forecasts v Euro and Dollar on Hung Parliament

Exit polls are usually a good indication of how elections will turnout as they are taken from random samples of people leaving their polling stations. If she can't put together a government, other parties get the chance to have a go.

Theresa May was hoping for a landslide but in the early hours of Friday she was confronted with the chaotic prospect of a hung parliament - or a small Tory majority at best - after the first projected United Kingdom election result. Instead of consolidating her power and living up to her party's "strong and stable" slogan, May now faces a hung parliament.

According to the BBC/Sky News/ITV poll released at 10pm, the Conservative Party will lose the slim majority it won in 2015, falling 12 seats short of the 326 needed for a majority.

But her lead had gradually shrunk over the course of the campaign, during which she backtracked on a major social care proposal, opted not to take part in a high-profile TV debate with her opponents, and faced questions over her record on security after Britain was hit by two Islamist militant attacks that killed 30 people. Or he or she could be held hostage by hardline Brexiteers on the right of the Tory party.

Mr Farron held on to his Westmorland and Lonsdale seat in Cumbria on a much-reduced majority, down from 8,949 in 2015 to just 777 now.

If the result is tight, or if the popular vote gives a different victor to the tally of seats, as much will depend on fixing a narrative in the early stages as straightforward math.

It's unclear whether the Brexit process can be stopped, as the United Kingdom already has informed the European Council it's leaving. Her Labour rival Jeremy Corbyn said she should step down.

A majority of Scottish voters (still) don't want to secede from the United Kingdom, despite them voting to remain in the European Union previous year when the majority of people in England and Wales voted to get out. Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May speaks during a campaign visit to Norwich, England, Wednesday June 7, 2017, on the final day of campaigning ahead of the general election on Thursday.

"With all those caveats repeated, I think Theresa May continues to be the dominant figure in the Conservative party".

The pro-European Liberal Democrats, who have campaigned for a second referendum that could keep Britain in the European Union, were forecast to increase their seats from nine to 14.

The first constituency-by-constituency results showed the Tories were failing to pick up Labour seats they had specifically targeting in their campaign.

The Conservatives can more realistically hope for the backing of one or both of the unionist parties in Northern Ireland, the DUP and UUP, who are supportive of May's Brexit position.

Later, the BBC revised its predictions to give 322 seats to the Conservatives, which may be just enough to have a "working majority", as a small number of MPs do not vote.

But May faced perhaps the greatest backlash for something she did not as prime minister, but as home secretary: overseeing crippling cuts to the U.K.'s police force between 2010 and 2016. The LibDems and SNP, who are both more anti-Brexit than Labour, would demand key concessions from Corbyn on European Union membership as conditions for power-sharing.

Some also argue that any Labour-led coalition might aim for a softer deal on Britain's planned departure from the European Union than the "hard Brexit" that markets have anxious May would deliver.

A make or break situation for May might be reached over the weekend.

If the seats tally is really tight, it's possible that neither of the main parties, Conservatives or Labour, can form a coalition that has an overall majority. Among the casualties was Alex Salmond, a former first minister of Scotland and one of the party's highest-profile lawmakers.