As counting continued through the night, it looked as though the overall turnout could be as low as 58%.

It seems likely that more people will fail to vote than will vote for the Labour Party, which has secured a second consecutive landslide victory.

The public apathy means that Labour may secure the support of just one in four people eligible to vote.

In Sunderland South, the first constituency in the country to declare, the turnout was just 48%.

This was lower than the turnout in any constituency at the last election.

The lowest turnout so far has been recorded in the safe Labour constituency of Liverpool River, where just 34.1% of the electorate voted - a massive drop of 17.5% on 1997.

Martin Bell, the independent candidate who lost his fight for Brentwood and Ongar, said the turnout figures were "the saddest statistics of the whole election".

Politics of contentment

Home Secretary Jack Straw said it was possible that the low turnout reflected the "politics of contentment".

He told the BBC: "What I have been finding on the doorsteps is that an awful lot of people are saying 'yes I am with you, of course I would turn out if it really mattered, but I think it is already won.'

"We will find after the election there are loads more people who wanted a Labour victory than actually turned out to vote.

Jack Straw: "The politics of contentment may be factor in low turnout"

"So the state of the moral authority will paradoxically be greater than that of the vote."

Disenchantment

However, Education Secretary David Blunkett warned that there might be a growing feeling of disenchantment with representative democracy - particularly among young people.

He said: "If we have won a majority greater than Margaret Thatcher's in 1983 we have got to rejoice and be happy, but then draw breath and decide how to engage with people."

She said: "Turnout looks as though it is going to be lousy. In that case we have to say that a lot of people were not very enthusiastic about the government, but they saw its return as inevitable."

Not engaged

Conservative leader William Hague said: "It is a sobering lesson for all parties that millions of people have been reluctant to participate in this election at all."

And his party chairman Michael Ancram added: "The low turnout suggests that all the arguments have not engaged the electorate."

But he said: "There are certainly absolutely no signs in the voting figures out tonight that this is a goverment that has successfully re-connected the people with politics."

The BBC polled people who decided not to vote.

Some 77% said there was no point in voting because it would not change a thing, while 65% said they did not trust politicians. Just over half said it was obvious that Labour would win anyway.

Among the 18-24 age group just 38% said they planed to vote. The figure for the 25-34 group was 45%, and for the 35-64 group it was 62%.