What time is the exit poll? Everything you need - including how accurate it is

From 7am to 10pm on Thursday, polling stations across the country will be open for people to put an X in the box next to the name of the person they want to represent them in the House of Commons.

For weeks, since Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced the July 4 election from a sodden Downing Street in May, polls have predicted a thumping Labour win.

But, polling day will result in the one survey which has become increasingly accurate in recent years: the exit poll.

Here's everything you need to know about it.

What time is the exit poll?

Arguably the most-pressing question, and the one with the simplest answer.

The exit poll will come out soon after 10pm.

What is the exit poll?

Pollsters from Ipsos Mori visit 144 polling stations across the UK and ask tens of thousands of people to privately fill in a replica ballot paper as they leave. This gives an indication of how they've voted.

Replica ballot papers and boxes are used to “maximise the confidentiality of people’s votes”, according to polling expert Sir John Curtice.

Workers from the polling company tend to go to the same locations at each general election as these have been chosen to be demographically representative of the country, with rural and urban seats, and weighted slightly in favour of marginal areas.

Sir John explained: “Wherever possible we go back to the same places as last time. The method of the exit poll is that you compare the results in the selected polling stations this time, with the results of the exit poll last time.”

With regards the reason for using a ballot paper and box, he added: "To ask them to tell an interviewer, then they might be reluctant to do that, so you’re trying to minimise the level of refusal, which is always an issue.”

The number of people approached at a polling station is known as a “systematic sample”, Sir John said, and the size of the samples varies according to the registered electorate for that area.

How accurate are they?

They've got better as the years have gone on.

The first one in 1974 predicted a 132-seat majority for Labour. In reality, it was three.

Sir John, professor of politics at Strathclyde University in Glasgow, said: “It’s tended to be relatively accurate, it’s not perfectly accurate, but there’s been a number of occasions in which it has ended up proving rather more accurate than what the opinion polls have been.

“Not that I’m suggesting that’s necessarily going to be the case this time but, on occasions like 2015 and 2017, the exit polls proved to give a better guide.”

The 2015 poll proved more accurate than opinion polls at the time, but while it predicted the Conservatives would be the largest party, it did not forecast the 11-seat majority.

Two years later the exit poll again predicted the Conservatives would be the largest party, but stopped short of saying there would be a hung Parliament.

Last time out, in 2019, it predicted a Conservative majority of 86 seats, which was very close to the final 80-seat margin of victory.