Britain, EU relation on knife-edge as historic EU referendum closes

Ballot boxes are on the way to more than 380 count venues after the EU referendum in Britain closed at 10 p.m. local time.

Millions of Britons went to about 41,000 polling stations on Thursday to cast their ballots in the EU referendum on whether their country should remain in or leave the European bloc.

As the referendum started at 7 a.m., several polling stations opened late on as overnight downpours hit London and southeast England, according to Xinhua.

Local media said two polling stations were closed by Kingston Council because of flooding, and voters were instructed to cast their ballots at alternative locations. Another polling station in Dover had power outage due to storms.

Figures from different campaigns have been seen cast their votes on Thursday.

According to the six main polls' results on Wednesday, only Opinium and TNS showed the Leave side gained more supports, while Populus, ComRes, Ipsos MORI and YouGov had more supports from the Remain side.

While NatCen Social Research's poll of polls suggested that 52 per cent would vote stay, and 48 per cent leave.

Meanwhile, sterling strengthened against the US dollar, hitting around 1.48 on Thursday. This is a rise from the 1.40 point hit on June 16, and is now not far off the 1.54 rate in May last year when the decision to have a referendum was announced.

Results will be declared throughout the night, and the final result will be officially declared at Manchester Town Hall, probably around breakfast time on Friday.

Figures from the Electoral Commission showed a record of 46.5 million people are entitled to take part in a nationwide referendum of this country.

--IANS

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