London:
After one of the most passionately contested elections in decades, the opposition Conservative Party was headed toward big, though not necessarily decisive, gains in Britain early on Friday.
But, barring a late surge, results declared in more than 600 of the 650 parliamentary constituencies pointed to the strong possibility of a stalemate, or hung parliament, with no single party commanding a majority and no definitive indication about the likely composition of a new government.
What seemed sure was that the Conservatives, led by David Cameron, would win the largest number of seats, probably dozens more than Labour, with the third party, the left-of-center Liberal Democrats, trailing. But without a majority, Mr. Cameron -- and the country -- could be heading for days of agonizing uncertainty as the two main parties set about trying to outmaneuver each other for power.
Under Britiain's uncodified constitution, parties with a plurality of the votes may form a minority government, as happened in the 1970s. But any new government must be able to withstand an early confidence vote in Parliament. In any event, the result seemed to spell the end of a 13-year run of undiluted Labour power that began with a landslide victory for Tony Blair in 1997.
By Friday morning, the Conservatives had gained 88 parliamentary seats, Labour had lost 82 and the Liberal Democrats were down by six seats compared to the 2005 vote. A BBC projection forecast that the Conservatives would secure 307 seats, Labour 261 and the Liberal Democrats an unexpectedly low 54.
Paddy Ashdown, a senior Liberal Democrat and former leader of the party, called the situation "muddled." Peter Mandelson, a close ally of Prime Minister Gordon Brown, said: "The public have turned a page, but it's not clear what chapter they want to open."
As he won re-election in his Oxfordshire constituency, Mr. Cameron said his party appeared likely to win more seats than in any election in 80 years, but avoided making claim to the keys at 10 Downing Street, saying, "What will guide me will be what's in the national interest."
If that hinted at a Conservative bid to govern with the Liberal Democrats, he was unsparing in his remarks about Labour. "I believe it's already clear that Labour has lost its mandate to govern," he said.
But with the national picture unclear, a long line of powerful Labour figures appeared on television to set out what appeared to be an orchestrated rationale for hanging on to power, even if the party finished far behind the Conservatives in the numbers of Commons seats.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown, although winning re-election in his Edinburgh-area constituency with an increased majority, appeared subdued as he thanked voters.
His remarks appeared deliberately ambiguous, leaving open the possibility that he would fight to stay on as prime minister, or step aside to make way for another Labour leader more acceptable to the Liberal Democrats. "The outcome is not yet known," he said, "but my duty, coming out of this election, is to play my part in Britain having strong, stable and principled government."
He offered "far-reaching reforms to our political system" -- apparently an overture to the Liberal Democrats who have made electoral reform a non-negotiable condition for partnership with other, larger parties in some form of coalition or alliance.
Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, who has called the party's lawmakers to meeting on Sunday, refused to be drawn on how his party would position itself. "I don't think anybody should rush into making claims or taking decisions that do not stand the test of time," he said early on Friday in his home constituency of Sheffield.
During the election campaign, Mr. Clegg took strong exception to the idea that Mr. Brown might continue to, as he put it, "squat" in 10 Downing Street, if he lost the election, raising the question of whether he would be more prepared to ally himself with Labour if it ousted Mr. Brown in favor of another leader.
Partial results announced showed a sharp swing from Labour to the Conservatives in seats in northern England that had been Labour strongholds for decades, with voter shifts from one party to the other that ranged from 5 to 11 percent. And early returns from central and southern England suggested a similarly strong shift to the Conservatives -- in some cases as high as 10 percent -- that raised, at least briefly, Conservative hopes of gaining a clear majority.
The uncertainty helped drive the British pound to its lowest level against the dollar -- $1.46 -- in over a year.
Pollsters had said that a nationwide swing of 7 percent in the Conservatives' favor might be enough for a slim majority. Across many parts of England, the party appeared to have approached or even surpassed that standard, and it made some surprising gains in Wales.
But the overall picture was spotty, with the Conservatives not posting the consistent gains across the country that they needed, and with the Labour vote holding up far better in some areas, especially Scotland, than in others. Notably, the Conservatives failed to win several seats that were high on a list of 116 that they identified as the most promising targets.
Perhaps the biggest surprise was the lackluster performance of the Liberal Democrats, who failed to make the major breakthrough that many had expected after the show-stealing performance of Mr. Clegg, the party leader, in three televised election debates that were the centerpiece of the campaign.
Lord Mandelson, the Labour Party's chief strategist and an influential cabinet colleague of Mr. Brown's, said that Labour had "the right to seek to form a government" by seeking support from other parties if the Conservatives fell short of a majority.
That pointed to a bid by Labour to form a coalition, or some other arrangement, with the Liberal Democrats. But the unimpressive performance of the Liberal Democrats stood as a potential obstacle to that plan, since a Liberal Democrat bloc of about 60 seats would be likely to leave Labour and the Liberal Democrats together with barely as many seats as the Conservatives.
The Labour maneuvers outraged leading Conservatives. "The idea of Gordon Brown hanging on to power, after being so decisively rejected, is frankly shocking," said George Osborne, who as shadow chancellor of the Exchequer would assume management of Britain's battered economy in the event of the Conservatives' taking power.
Election experts said a clear picture of the overall seat count would probably not be available until at least mid-morning on Friday, and that in a close finish between the two parties, results from some outlying areas, such as distant parts of Scotland, could take much longer.
One count, in Northern Ireland, was suspended because of a bomb scare, a reminder of the decades of sectarian violence that raged before the Good Friday peace agreement of 1998 that the Labour government counts as one of its major achievements.
In dozens of other seats, voters gathered angrily outside polling stations after officials shut the doors as the voting hours expired with hundreds of would-be voters still waiting in line. The BBC said that the national turnout appeared to have been substantially higher than in the last election, in 2005, when barely 61 percent of an electorate of about 45 million people cast ballots.
Conservative hopes of forming a majority government were bolstered by the prospect of gaining the support of as many as nine members of Parliament likely to win seats for the mainly Protestant unionist parties in Northern Ireland. But there could be a bitter, behind-the-scenes struggle for the right to govern.
Mr. Brown, at 59, waited 10 years to succeed Mr. Blair as prime minister in 2007, and has survived several attempts by cabals of senior Labour figures to oust him as party leader, refusing to quit even when some of his closest cabinet associates deserted him.
A gritty, often grumpy and occasionally self-righteous man, proud of the dogged persistence and strict adherence to principle he says he inherited as the son of a Scottish Presbyterian minister, he has cast himself as the man who saved Britain from economic disaster with a Keynesian program that pumped tens of billions of pounds into saving Britain's banks and had the Bank of England channel tens of billions more into propping up the wider economy. In effect, he has put himself forward as the indispensable man.
But a hung Parliament, with no party securing a clear majority, could test the principles of all the contenders, and risk further alienating an electorate already deeply distrustful of politicians as a result of a scandal over parliamentary expenses last year that showed scores of members of Parliament enriching themselves with dubious claims.