British voters head to the polls Thursday for a parliamentary election that opinion polls show is too close to predict.

Results of a national survey Wednesday showed Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative party with support from 33 percent of British voters. Ed Milliband’s main opposition Labor party was just one point behind.

The polling suggests that the election results could force either of Britain’s two main political parties to form a new coalition government with any of several parties collecting a smaller share of seats in the 650-member House of Commons.

Analysts are calling the election Britain’s most unpredictable and consequential in a generation.

Cameron has promised if re-elected to hold a referendum on whether Britain should stay in the 28-nation European Union. The question of Scottish independence from Britain remains as a key issue. Scottish nationalists lost a plebiscite last year, but could emerge with the third biggest bloc of seats in Thursday’s voting and form a coalition with the Labor party.

Cameron, Britain’s leader since 2010, and Miliband have both cast the election as a referendum on the country’s economy, the world’s fifth largest.

”People really want to think carefully before casting their vote,” Cameron said at a campaign stop at a farm, “but I believe when the crunch comes, when they ask themselves the question: Do I trust Ed Miliband with the economy or do I want to stick with a plan and a team that’s turning the country round?  I think we can do very well on Thursday and cross that line.”

Miliband has attempted to characterize Cameron’s Tories as the party of the wealthy.

“This is the clearest choice that has been put before the British people for a generation,” Miliband said, “between a Tory government that works only for the privileged few or a Labor government that will put working families first.”

Many voters are turning away from the major parties, chiefly to the separatist Scottish National Party, which will dominate north of the border, and the anti-immigrant U.K. Independence Party (UKIP). UKIP is third in opinion polls but Britain’s electoral system means it can win at most a handful of seats.

Leaders vote

Labour leader Ed Miliband cast his vote early alongside his wife, Justine, in northern England. Early voters were bemused to find photographers, reporters and television crews waiting in the middle of the briefly closed-off road in Miliband’s Doncaster North constituency.

UKIP leader Nigel Farage also voted early in the southeastern constituency of South Thanet, and then tweeted: “I can’t tell you who I voted for!”

In the bright early-morning sunshine in London, voters gathered to cast ballots at a polling station close to Parliament as police stood guard.

Signs of the unfolding political drama were all around.  The squares opposite Parliament were packed with temporary outdoor television studios, while commuters picked up newspapers urging voters to the polls.

“It’s going to be important for Britain for the next five years,” said Gerry McQuillan, 61, an arts administrator voting Labor. “We’re coming out of economic austerity but we’ve got to get the right government for the next five years.”

Alexis Thomas, 34, a doctor, was mindful of all the predictions of a dead heat and wanted to make her voice heard.

“Because it’s so tight, I think that if I didn’t come out and vote, and didn’t get the result that I wanted, then I’d only have myself to blame,” Thomas said, though she wasn’t saying what result that was.

More than 45 million people are eligible to vote at 50,000 polling stations set up throughout Britain. Polls will close at 10 p.m.

Some material for this report came from the Associated Press.
…