Get the coffee on! How big night will unfold

10:00pm

THE polls close, and we get the first indication of how Election Day has gone as the BBC, ITV and Sky release exit polls and try to predict a winner.

10:55pm

HOUGHTON and Sunderland South prides itself on being the first constituency to declare a result. No dramas here – it is rock-solid Labour.

1:00am

A KEY Labour target – Tory-held Nuneaton – declares. With Ed Miliband facing huge losses in Scotland, he must pick up seats like this.

2:00am

ANOTHER Labour target, Northampton North, declares. The result in Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, the Scottish seat vacated by Gordon Brown, is also due. It will show if the SNP surge is under way.

3:00am

LABOUR election chief Douglas Alexander will find out if he has been defeated by the SNP’s Mhairi Black, 20, above, in Paisley and Renfrewshire South. Labour’s Scottish leader Jim Murphy learns his fate in East Renfrewshire, while victory for Ukip in Thurrock, Essex, would cheer Nigel Farage.

4:00am

IF THE Tories snatch exLib Dem minister Nick Harvey’s Devon North seat, they could be on course to destroy the Lib Dems’ South-West heartland.

4:30am

ALL eyes on the Aberdeenshire seat of Gordon where exSNP leader Alex Salmond is standing. Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg will discover if he has held Sheffield Hallam – and his job as leader. No such worries for David Cameron in Witney, Oxfordshire. He may know by now if he has a second term as PM.

5:00am

JUST before the sun comes up, Tory poster girl Esther McVey will hear if she has retained Wirral West in Merseyside. Ukip’s Tory defector Mark Reckless will know if he has held his Rochester and Strood seat, and, in Inverness, Lib Dem Danny Alexander is likely to become the highest-profile Cabinet victim.

6:00am

FARAGE is counting on victory in Thanet South – he has said that if he loses, he will quit as leader. More predictably, the Commons comeback of Boris Johnson, below, is expected to be confirmed by a Tory win in Uxbridge.

6:30am

MOST results are in, but if the Election is as close as the experts predict, it could be hours before a winner emerges.

1:00pm

ONE of the last results is due from St Ives in Cornwall, where Lib Dem candidate Andrew George hopes to hold on.