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LONDON (AP) — 10:17 p.m. (2107 GMT; 5:07 EDT)
U.S. President Barack Obama has congratulated U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron on his victory in the general elections.
A statement issued by the White House on Friday, says Obama said he "looks forward to building on their already close relationship."
The statement added that the "two leaders look forward to meeting with each other and their colleagues at the G-7 summit this June in Germany."
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9:10 p.m. (2010 GMT; 4:20 p.m. EDT)
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has congratulated U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron and his party for defying the polls and winning an outright majority in the elections.
Speaking Paris Friday, Kerry said he looked forward to continuing to work with Cameron and Secretary of State Philip Hammond and underlined the special relationship between the U.S. and Great Britain.
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6:20 p.m. (1720 GMT; 1:20 p.m. EDT)
David Miliband, Britain's former foreign secretary and brother of defeated Labour leader Ed, has expressed sympathy for his Labour colleagues in Britain's election.
Some were speculating that the elder Miliband brother, who lost to Ed in a Labour leadership contest in 2010, could return to British politics after the disastrous results for the party in Thursday's general election.
He did not make any suggestion to that effect Friday, but tweeted that his heart "goes out to great colleagues who lost seats" and "of course to Ed," who won his own parliament seat but resigned as leader of Labour earlier in the day.
David Miliband resigned from Parliament in 2013 and moved to New York to head a humanitarian aid charity.
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5:55 p.m. (1655 GMT; 12:55 p.m. EDT)
Prime Minister David Cameron has reappointed senior members of his Cabinet after winning a surprise victory in Britain's election.
Philip Hammond remains as foreign secretary and Michael Fallon is to continue as defense secretary. Earlier, Cameron re-appointed George Osborne as Treasury chief and Theresa May to home secretary, responsible for law and order.
Because the Conservatives now don't need a coalition partner to govern, Cameron will be in position to reward his favorites with Cabinet seats vacated by the Liberal Democrats, his former government partner.
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5:05 p.m. (1605 GMT; 12:05 p.m. EDT) George Osborne, Britain's Treasury chief, has been re-appointed to the role after Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservatives secured a majority in the election.
Osborne was also made First Secretary of State, effectively the equivalent to deputy prime minister, the most senior Cabinet minister beneath Cameron.
He also announced that Theresa May would retain the role of home secretary.
The Conservatives secured more than half of the House of Commons' 650 seats in Thursday's election, beating its rival Labour Party to secure a second term in office.
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4:10 p.m. (1510 GMT; 11:10 a.m. EDT)
A bookmaker says a retired man who placed a huge bet on Britain's Conservatives winning a majority government has bagged 240,000 pounds ($370,000).
Ladbrokes says the unidentified customer placed a 30,000-pound bet for the unexpected outcome — at odds of 7/1 — at a branch in Glasgow, Scotland, on April 29.
Many in Britain were stunned by Prime Minister David Cameron and his Conservatives' victory because earlier opinion polls consistently predicted an inconclusive election in which the Tories and their rival Labour Party were locked in a dead heat.
Alex Donohue, spokesman for Ladbrokes, said Friday, "we tip our hats to his political forecasting skills."
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4 p.m. (1500 GMT; 11 a.m. EDT)
American strategist David Axelrod, hired by the Labour Party to boost its election campaign, says he is disappointed by the result.
Labour lost to the ruling Conservatives, who secured an outright majority in Parliament in a surprise victory Friday.
Axelrod, a former adviser to President Barack Obama, said on Twitter Friday that he would always be proud of Labour leader Ed Miliband and "his heartfelt battle to make Britain work for all her people."
He also congratulated fellow U.S. strategist Jim Messina for his role in the Conservatives' victory.
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3:55 p.m. (1455 GMT; 10:55 a.m. EDT)
The Conservatives' unexpected election victory has caused some hasty rewriting for playwright Peter Morgan.
Morgan is reworking "The Audience," his play about the private weekly meetings between Queen Elizabeth II and the dozen prime ministers of her six-decade reign.
Even as Cameron was visiting the palace Friday to inform the queen of his victory, Morgan was scripting a new scene between the re-elected premier and the queen, played by Kristin Scott Thomas.
Morgan said Scott Thomas and Mark Dexter, who plays Cameron, "will be rehearsing this new dialogue this afternoon and I hope tonight's audience in particular will enjoy our immediate response today's results."
By custom the monarch invites the victorious leader in an election to form a new government, though she has no power to affect the outcome.
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3:40 p.m. (1440 GMT; 10:40 a.m. EDT)
A final tally of results from Britain's election shows Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservatives winning a total of 331 of the House of Commons' 650 seats.
That puts them clearly ahead of Labour, their main rival, which won 232 seats. The Scottish National Party had 56, while the Liberal Democrats came in at just eight.
Cameron spoke earlier Friday outside the prime minister's office at 10 Downing Street, promising to govern as the party of "one nation, one United Kingdom."
The Conservatives' clear win brought the election to a faster-than-expected conclusion.
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3:10 p.m. (1410 GMT; 10:10 a.m. EDT)
All of Britain's party leaders — both victors and losers — have lined up together in central London to mark the 70th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day.
Prime Minister David Cameron, who hours earlier declared his Conservatives were returning to power after winning a majority in the election, stood side by side with his rivals in front of London's Cenotaph war monument.
All leaders stood solemnly holding wreaths of red poppies and observed a moment's silence in honor of the fallen in World War II.
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1:15 p.m. (1215 GMT; 8:15 a.m. EDT)
Prime Minister David Cameron says he will form a majority Conservative government after securing a majority in the Britain's general election.
Cameron signaled a conciliatory tone after securing a majority, congratulating former coalition partner, Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, and opposition leader Ed Miliband. He promised to govern as the party of "One nation, One United Kingdom."
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12:45 p.m. (1145 GMT; 7:45 a.m. EDT)
Prime Minister David Cameron has won an absolute majority in Britain's Parliamentary elections, taking 326 of the possible 650 seats up for grabs in the House of Commons.
A win in the Cotswolds constituency in western England announced in the early afternoon took the Conservatives past the threshold.
The stunning result comes after polls predicted for weeks that the race between the Conservatives and the opposition Labour Party would be a dead heat.
Cameron went Friday afternoon to Buckingham Palace, where he is expected to tell Queen Elizabeth II that he has enough support to form a government.
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12:20 p.m. (1120 GMT; 7:20 a.m. EDT)
Ed Miliband, the leader of Britain's Labour Party, says he will step down after a worse-than-expected result in the election.
The party lost dozens of seats to the separatist Scottish National Party, which took almost all of the 59 seats in Scotland.
Speaking to party members who cheered in support, Miliband said Friday he wanted to resign straight away so that the party can rebuild itself.
With 641 of 650 seats counted, Labour has 229 seats, finishing well below the 258 seats secured five years ago by former leader and ex-Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
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11:45 a.m. (1045 GMT; 6:45 a.m. EDT)
Nick Clegg has resigned as leader of Britain's Liberal Democrats after a disastrous result for his party in the election.
Clegg said he must take responsibility for the party's losses, which he described as much more crushing that he expected.
The Liberal Democrats, the Conservatives' junior coalition partner, lost most of the seats they held in Parliament. Many of their most senior and experienced politicians lost their seats.
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11:40 a.m. (1040 GMT; 6:40 a.m. EDT)
Nigel Farage has resigned as leader of the populist U.K. Independence Party after failed to win a seat in the U.K. parliamentary election.
Farage, who had earlier promised to resign if he lost, told activists "I'm a man of my word."
But he raised the prospect he would consider running again in the future.
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11:30 a.m. (1030 GMT; 6:30 a.m. EDT)
British Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservatives have secured enough seats to form a majority government.
Results from Thursday's election show that the Conservatives won at least 324 of the House of Commons' 650 seats, enough to form a slim majority government.
The Conservatives are ahead of their main rival, the Labour Party, which lost dozens of seats to the separatist Scottish National Party.
The win makes Cameron the first Conservative prime minister to win a second term since Margaret Thatcher.
Cameron stopped just short of declaring overall victory earlier Friday, saying he hoped to govern "one nation, one United Kingdom" if he was fortunate enough to continue as prime minister.
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10:40 a.m. (0940 GMT; 5:40 a.m. EDT)
The United Kingdom Independence Party leader, Nigel Farage, has lost his bid to win a seat in Parliament and could resign despite his right-wing party's surge to third in the popular vote nationwide.
Farage finished second to Conservative Party candidate Craig Mackinlay, a former UKIP activist, in the South Thanet constituency east of London as results were announced Friday.
Before the result, Farage had pledged to quit as UKIP leader if he failed to win the seat. He decried the British electoral system's use of winner-takes-all constituencies. UKIP received nearly 3.8 million votes, but finished second or third in dozens of districts.
Farage said before the result: "The system is bust. You've got a first-past-the-post system where we clearly become the third party in Britain but get hardly any seats."
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9:25 a.m. (0825 GMT; 4:25 a.m. EDT)
With Prime Minister David Cameron on the brink of a majority for another five years of Conservative government in the U.K, markets seemed buoyed by prospect of avoiding weeks of political wrangling for power.
Mark Dampier, head of investment research at Hargreaves Lansdown stockbrokers, says that "business as usual might be the order of the day from this election result.
But markets are likely to be concerned over the next two years about the prospect of a referendum on whether or not to leave the European Union.
HSBC economists Simon Wells and Liz Martins say a referendum on EU membership by end-2017 now seems much more likely.
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8:55 a.m. (0755 GMT; 3:55 a.m. EDT)
Prime Minister David Cameron's office says he is going to Buckingham Palace later Friday to see Queen Elizabeth II.
Downing Street says that will take place at 12:30p.m. (1130 GMT).
He is expected to tell her that he has enough support in Parliament to form a government.
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8:45 a.m. (0745 GMT; 3:45 a.m. EDT)
Another big Labour figure has fallen in U.K. national elections, as the party's Treasury spokesman, Ed Balls, lost his seat in northern England to the Conservatives by 422 votes.
Had Labour won, Balls would have been finance minister.
He said that "any personal disappointment I have at this result is as nothing as compared to the sense of sorrow I have at the result Labour has achieved ... and the sense of concern I have about the future."
Balls said Britain faces "five years where questions will arise about the future of our union, about whether we can stay as a member of the European Union and fight for jobs and investment, whether we can make sure we secure our National Health Service at a time when public spending is cut."
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7:55 a.m. (0655 GMT, 2:55 a.m. EDT)
All night, famous political faces and household names in Britain had to stand on stages at vote counting centers to hear they had lost their seats in Parliament.
Douglas Alexander, who directed the opposition Labour's campaign and would have been Britain's foreign secretary if they had won, was defeated by a 20-year-old student from the Scottish National Party.
The Liberal Democrats suffered the worst, as almost their entire top team — many of them government ministers — was felled. Casualties included Business Secretary Vince Cable, chief secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander, Energy Secretary Ed Davey and high-profile lawmakers Lynne Featherstone and Simon Hughes.
"This has been a terrible night for our party all over," Cable said. "But I am absolutely sure that we are going to bounce back."
Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg kept his own seat but was meeting with colleagues Friday to figure out whether he will resign.
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7:45 a.m. (0645 GMT, 2:45 a.m. EDT)
All seats in Scotland have been counted in Britain's latest vote, making clear the scale of the landslide by the Scottish National Party, which captured 56 of the region's 59 seats.
That was a gain of 50 seats over the nationalists' previous six seats in the 650-seat House of Commons.
The opposition Labour Party lost 40 seats in Scotland. The result left the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats with just one seat each in Scotland.
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6:25 a.m. (0525 GMT, 1:25 a.m. EDT)
George Galloway, one of Britain's most colorful and controversial figures, has lost his Bradford West seat to the Labour Party.
Galloway, an outspoken critic of Israel and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, won the seat from Labour in a 2012 special election. But some locals accused the left-wing firebrand — who once saluted Saddam Hussein and has appeared on a reality-TV show pretending to be a cat — of spending little time in Bradford, which has a large Muslim population.
The candidate from the tiny Respect Party lost by a wide margin to Labour's Naz Shah after a bitter campaign in the northern England city. Shah is a political newcomer who has overcome childhood poverty, a teenage forced marriage and the imprisonment of her mother for killing an abusive partner.
Shah had urged voters to reject Galloway because "we do not need a one-man Messiah to tell us how to come and fix up Bradford."
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6:15 a.m. (0515 GMT, 1:15 a.m. EDT)
Prime Minister David Cameron has easily won his Witney seat in southern England, and stopped just short for declaring overall election victory for his Conservatives.
He told voters "this is clearly a very strong night for the Conservative Party."
Results seem to support an exit poll's prediction the Tories will be the biggest seat in the House of Commons and may even win a majority of seats.
A Conservative-led government would face a divided Britain, with the pro-independence Scottish National Party holding almost all the seats north of the border. Cameron has vowed to counter the rise of Scottish nationalism with more powers for Scotland and Wales within the United Kingdom.
He says "I want my party, and I hope a government that I would like to lead, to reclaim a mantle that we should never have lost — the mantle of one nation, one United Kingdom."
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5 a.m. (0400 GMT, midnight EDT)
He's back. London Mayor Boris Johnson has once again won a seat in parliament, this time representing voters in the Uxbridge and Ruislip South district, as Conservative Party candidates did much better than expected in Britain's election.
The shaggy-haired mayor, seen as a possible future Conservative Party leader, had previously represented Henley.
"The people of Britain, after a long and exhausting campaign, have finally spoken," he said early Friday. "They have decisively rejected any attempt to take this country back to the 1970s. They want us to go forward with the sensible, moderate policies that have led to a sustained economic recovery."
Johnson will do both jobs until voters choose a new London mayor in 2016.
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