General election 2019 results: Hung parliament? Corbyn as PM or a Tory win? The five possible scenarios

Our chief political commentator sets out the range of possible outcomes to expect after the polls close at 10pm

Britain goes to the polls on Thursday in an election that could return a range of outcomes, all with major implications for the future of the country.

Here are five possible scenarios that could emerge overnight between Thursday and Friday:

Conservative seats	Majority	Result
Lose 71+	Labour majority	Labour government	Jeremy Corbyn's wildest dreams come true
Lose 7-70	Hung parliament	Labour minority government	Jeremy Corbyn's unexpected triumph, but he would need support (or abstention) of other parties to become PM
Lose up to 6; gain up to 3	Hung parliament	No change	Disaster for Conservatives, who would still need DUP support to form a government and so Boris Johnson would need a new Brexit deal
Gain 4-14	Tory working majority of 1-21	Johnson weak and stable	Boris Johnson could probably take us out of the EU, but trade negotiations after that would look tricky
Gain 15+	Tory working majority of 23+	Johnson dominant	Historic win: the biggest for the Tories since 1987; Johnson with a mandate for a hard Brexit and five years in power

What is a majority?

The absolute majority matters in comparing with previous elections. In 2015 David Cameron’s absolute majority was 12, the difference between the number of Conservative seats, 331, and all other parties, 319, in a House of Commons of 650. But because there were then five Sinn Fein MPs who didn’t take their seats, Cameron had a working majority of 17 (331 to 314).

The working majority matters to a government trying to get its laws through parliament. So Boris Johnson needs to gain just four seats to gain a working majority of one (if Sinn Fein still has seven seats). The Conservatives had 318 seats at the last election, including the speaker (Buckingham originally being a Conservative seat and counting as one this time), so four net gains would give them 322, as against 321 for all the other parties.