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| Election results: Conservatives on course for majority |
David Cameron says he hopes to govern for all of the UK as a BBC forecast gives the Tories 329 seats - enough to form a slender majority in the Commons.
His party made gains in England and Wales, including taking Ed Balls' seat.
Two senior Labour sources have told the BBC that Ed Miliband is expected to stand down later after Labour was all but wiped out by the SNP in Scotland.
The Lib Dems are heading for as few as eight MPs, with Vince Cable, Ed Davey and Danny Alexander losing their seats.
The BBC forecast, with well over half of the results now in, is Conservative 329, Labour 234, the Lib Dems eight, the SNP 56, Plaid Cymru three, UKIP one, the Greens one and others 19.
The Conservatives are expected to have won a 37% share of the national vote, Labour 31%, UKIP 13%, the Lib Dems 8%, the SNP 5%, the Green Party 4% and Plaid Cymru 1%.
In other election developments:
- Ed Miliband is expected to make a statement about his own future later after what he said was a "difficult and disappointing" night for Labour
- Following a recount, Ed Balls lost his Morley and Outwood seat to the Conservatives by just over 400 votes
- Nick Clegg has held on to his Sheffield Hallam seat but said it had been a "cruel and punishing night" for his party and he would be making a statement on his future later
- George Galloway, who was reported to the police for retweeting an exit pollbefore voting ended, has lost to Labour in Bradford West
- Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy and shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander have lost their seats to the SNP
- UKIP are polling strongly in the North of England and Douglas Carswell has retained his Clacton seat but Mark Reckless has lost his seat and Nigel Farage could fail to win Thanet South
- Former Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy lost his seat to the SNP in Ross, Skye and Lochaber
- Conservative minister Esther McVey has lost Wirral West to Labour
- The Green Party is predicted to get one seat after Caroline Lucas retains the Brighton Pavilion constituency she won in 2010
Mr Cameron all but declared victory in a speech after being returned as MP for Witney, in which he set out his intention to press ahead with an in/out referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union and to complete the Conservatives' economic plan.
"My aim remains simple - to govern on the basis of governing for everyone in our United Kingdom," he said.
"I want to bring our country together, our United Kingdom together, not least by implementing as fast as we can the devolution that we rightly promised and came together with other parties to agree both for Wales and for Scotland.
"In short, I want my party, and I hope a government I would like to lead, to reclaim a mantle that we should never have lost - the mantle of One Nation, One United Kingdom. That is how I will govern if I am fortunate enough to form a government in the coming days."
Mr Cameron has returned to Downing Street with his wife Samantha and is expected to hold an audience with the Queen later on Friday.
Chancellor George Osborne said the Conservatives had been "given a mandate to get on with the work we started five years ago" and would follow the "clear instructions" of the British public.
Speaking in Doncaster, where he retained his seat, Labour leader Ed Miliband said; "Clearly this has been a very disappointing and difficult night for the Labour Party.
Analysis by Nick Robinson
Not since the fall of Thatcher or the Blair landslide has there been a political moment quite like this one.
Personal triumphs for David Cameron and Nicola Sturgeon will not just reshape British politics but could perhaps reshape the future of the United Kingdom itself.
Bitter disappointment for Ed Miliband and a political disaster for Nick Clegg may lead to both men quitting, and is sure to lead to months of soul searching for their parties as they mourn the loss of some of their most famous faces - felled by a brutal electoral firing squad.
If UKIP's Nigel Farage fails to win his seat, as many expect, he promised too that he would resign. His party amassed millions of votes in England, more than the SNP in Scotland, but they have struggled to convert them into seats.
The future, though, belongs to David Cameron who defied all those - including at times himself - who doubted that he could ever increase his party's support.
"We haven't made the gains we wanted in England and Wales and in Scotland we have seen a surge of nationalism overwhelming our party."
He said the next government had a "huge responsibility" and a difficult task to "keep our country together".
After his own defeat, one of the most surprising results of the night, Mr Balls said he had a "sense of sorrow" about his party's disappointing performance but he was "confident that Labour would be back" as a "united and determined" political force.
Mr Cameron looks like he will form a majority Conservative government, without the need for a coalition or the formal support of other parties.
The finishing line needed to form an absolute majority is 326, but because Sinn Fein MPs have not taken up seats and the Speaker does not normally vote, the finishing line has, in practice, been 323. In this election, Sinn Fein kept four seats.
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