How will the European referendum results be announced?

Counting in the European referendum will be done by local council area, with the results declared in each area as they are completed. Rather as with general elections where the first few results can point to the final result well before the last seat has finished counting, this means that we will get early indications of the likely result well before the final result is ready.

But there are two major caveats. First, there will be no exit poll. With a general election, we get an exit poll straight after the polls close and then the early results rapidly tell us if the poll is right or wrong. That gives a very strong steer to the result from early on. Second, in a general election we have the previous results to compare with, so even in the very first seat to declare – usually a safe Labour seat these days – we can see who is up, who is down and what the overall picture is looking like because we know the changes on last time. This time we have none of that historic data, only various models and speculations about how areas might vote. So most likely there will be more uncertainty and for longer as the results come in.

To fill out the detail behind the process, there are 382 Counting Officers, one for each local government area in England, Scotland and Wales plus one each for Northern Ireland and Gibraltar.

As each Counting Officer completes the figures for their area, their figures will then be collated by a team of 11 Regional Counting Officers. In turn those 11 collations will be drawn up into the final overall totals by the Chief Counting Officer, the Chair of the Electoral Commission.

There are estimated times for when each council will declare. Similar estimates have been of very variable quality in the past, so do not read too much into them other than to note that in theory we will have Foyle, Sunderland and Wandsworth as the first three. If they all vote the same way, that would be a good indicator as to the final result. If.

You can get the full list of European referendum declaration timings, sorted by time, here. (Note that this list has 399 timings as there is one counting officer for Northern Ireland but the count is being split between 18 counts.)

UPDATE: After the referendum result was declared, the BBC was able to piece together a large number of ward results.