A constituency is a very small part of the country -- there are 659 of them in the U.K.

The political party that gets the most Members of Parliament in, well, Parliament will choose the leader of the Parliament. That person is the Prime Minister. He or she is more or less in charge of the country.

What's a political party like in the U.K., you ask? Well, it's sort of like Republicans and Democrats in America, but a bit different. We have three main parties (well, two and a main-ish party). I'm not going to tell you their policies because (as I've found) this can be a long discussion, and often leads to bias. If you want to know about what these parties stand for, go to the provided links below.

Labour: This is the party which is, currently, in power. Led by Tony Blair. A win in the May 5 election would mean a third term in office for Tony Blair. (See below for the results!) One of their campaign slogans is "If you value it, vote for it." http://www.labour.org.uk

Conservatives: (Also known as the Tories.) The last time this party was in power was from 1979-1997, with two different prime minsters: Margaret Thatcher and John Major. The current leader of the party is Michael Howard. Their campaign slogan for this election was, "Are you thinking what we're thinking?" http://www.conservatives.com

Liberal Democrats: According to my source (http://bubl.ac.uk/link/b/britishpoliticalhistory.htm), the Liberal Democrats ("Lib Dems") themselves have never been in power. I have been told that a separate party known as the "Liberals" were once in power and sometime later merged with another party to become the Liberal Democrats. This is the main-ish party I referred to earlier. Led by Charles Kennedy, it doesn't usually get as many votes as either the Conservatives or Labour. Their slogan is "The REAL alternative." http://www.libdems.org.uk/

There are other parties, such as Respect (an anti-war party), the Scottish Nationalist Party, Veritas, British National Party, the Green Party and, my personal favourite, the Official Monster Raving Loony Party. All of these would be great to research. I do have to admit that I think some -- not mentioning any -- would be better than others.

Coming up to May 5, the atmosphere was very tense as the Labour party had been accused of unmentionable things. Prime Minister Tony Blair had lost popularity over the Iraq war and other political conflicts, and people were wondering who was going to be in power next.

In our school's mock election, the Lib Dems won. But then again, there were only six parties in our school's mock election, while in real life there are several more.

There was a very long election show on BBC where you gradually saw the votes being counted as they came in. And the winner was... Labour!

I'm not going to tell you what I think of that, but Tony Blair and the Labour party will continue to hold power here in the U.K. for another five years. Here were the results.

Labour: 356 seats
Conservatives: 197 seats
Liberal Democrats: 62 seats
Other parties: 30 seats

Don't forget, it's not just that we're voting for the person to lead the country, we're also voting for the people who will deal with local issues.

This is Cobd.

Editor's Note: Thanks for your very thorough and interesting report, cobd! In checking some background info on your article, I came across this site, run by Parliament itself. Very helpful! http://www.parliament.uk/works/elections.cfm

And don't miss the BBC's map of the general election: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/vote2005/flash_map/html/map05.stm