Brace yourselves, the UK Conservatives just won an outright majority

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NEED TO KNOW:

Well, that was unexpected. The results of the UK election turned out to be pretty shocking. Nothing that was predicted happened. The smaller parties didn't fare so well. And there will be no drawn-out negotiations to form a coalition.

The Conservative Party won an outright majority of seats in the House of Commons. Prime Minister David Cameron will stay in his job at No. 10 Downing Street. The far-right United Kingdom Independence Party kept just a single seat. (Maybe that's because its leaders say things like this about women and minorities.) Its leader, Nigel Farage, lost and then resigned as the party's leader. Same thing happened to the far-left Green Party.

Voters gave the Liberal Democrats a crushing defeat. The centrist party shared power with the Conservatives for the last five years, often preventing some of the Conservatives' more conservative policies from moving ahead.

That's not going to happen anymore. Cameron has an easy majority and is likely going to have a joyful next few years. Here's what we can expect, according to GlobalPost Senior Correspondent Corinne Purtill, who is based in London:

“Some items we know are on their wish list: A 2017 referendum on the UK’s membership in the European Union. A “snoopers’ charter,” a bill expanding the state’s ability to monitor mass communications. Continuing austerity measures. Almost certainly the UK will shift farther to the right, with deeper cuts to benefits and stricter immigration controls.”

WANT TO KNOW:

In the United States, most of the country's largest media organizations — some might call them the mainstream media — make an effort to appear unbiased and nonpartisan during elections. They are not always successful. Sometimes the effort is laughable. But in America, impartiality outside of the opinion sections is supposed to give a newspaper or TV news show credibility.

That's not the case in the United Kingdom. It is almost impossible not to know where newspapers in Britain stand politically. The Daily Telegraph, for instance, is a 114-year-old London newspaper. It sent an email to all of its subscribers two days before the election, urging them to vote for Cameron's Conservative Party. The email was signed by Editor Chris Evans.

The lead headline on the Daily Mail's website the day before the election, meanwhile, gave voters strategic advice on how they could prevent Labour Party leader Ed Miliband from taking office. Liberal publications like the Mirror do the same kind of thing.

It doesn't seem so “fair and balanced.” But maybe it's better than pretending otherwise?

STRANGE BUT TRUE:

While the lead-up to the election is often filled with over-the-top headlines, hilarious gaffes and other excitement, election day itself in the United Kingdom can be painfully boring. There is practically nothing to talk about on the news because Britain bans exit poll reporting until the day is over. Then the count goes on all night, with results announced in the morning.

So it's up to the media to find other ways to cover it. And cover it they did. GlobalPost's Timothy McGrath did a solid job compiling some of the most compelling stories in our live blog. It includes coverage of the all-important trend: #DogsAtPollingStations. It's a must-read.