THE official results of the May 7 British general elections were released May 8, with two winners and several losers. The biggest losers arguably were the pollsters, who generally predicted a close election with nearly equal numbers of seats going to the main contenders: the Conservative Party, or Tories, and the Labour Party. Such an outcome would have presaged extended coalition negotiations and continued uncertainty. Instead, the center-right Tories were a clear winner, gaining a majority that gives them sole charge of the country. This will end five years of coalition rule in which the Tories had to share power with the centrist Liberal Democrats.

The Scottish National Party was the second clear winner, taking all but three of the Scottish seats it contested. The party now holds 56 seats, compared to six previously. The swing in Scotland came at the expense of the center-left Labour Party, whose leader, Ed Miliband, has already resigned. Liberal Democrat leader and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg also left his post following his party’s loss of 49 seats (it now holds only eight). Beyond the tallies of the individual parties, however, the biggest election-day victors were the United Kingdom’s two key divisive forces: nationalism and Euroskepticism.

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