At 8am on the 6th May 2010, the day of that year's British general election, Nigel Farage, MEP for the minor Eurosceptic party UKIP (the UK Independence Party), set out for his last and arguably most ambitious piece of campaigning. Assisted by a stunt pilot, Justin Adams, he flew over the fields of the Buckingham constituency in which he was challenging Speaker of the Commons John Bercow (who was not opposed by the major parties) in a PZL-104 Wilga aircraft with a banner affixed to the back with the slogan 'Vote for your country- Vote UKIP'.
However, disaster soon struck when the banner became wrapped around the tailfin of the plane, forcing its nose down. The plane careened towards Hinton-in-the-Hedges airfield, near Brackley in Northamptonshire, and due to an effort by the pilot to straighten the plane it landed much more harshly than it might have had it simply nosedived into the airfield. Both Adams and Farage were dead by the time the airfield's staff could get to them.
The news proved a significant shock to the public, even those with little investment or support for UKIP; all three major party leaders offered their condolences to the families of Adams and Farage, and UKIP leader Baron Pearson gave a heartfelt speech on the afternoon before the election dedicated to Farage.
By the time the polls closed, political analysts noted a tiny shift to UKIP putting them ahead of their fairly poor projections. A sympathy vote to a party whose leader had died during the campaign was not unheard of; it had been highly significant in the 2002 Dutch election when Pim Fortuyn's party surged to become the second-largest after Fortuyn was assassinated. However, the effect was nowhere near this significant for UKIP; they only performed about .01% better than expected across the country.
Regardless, in such a close election, this did have an impact. Ironically, post-election analysis showed UKIP mainly gained at the expense of the Tories, as voters skeptical of David Cameron's 'modernization' of the party defected to the more right-wing minor party. In part due to the late UKIP surge, Labour clung onto Cardiff North, Hendon, Lancaster and Fleetwood, North Warwickshire, Sherwood and Thurrock, all by less than a hundred votes except North Warwickshire, and the Lib Dems just held on to Cambourne and Redruth, Oxford West and Abingdon, and Truro and Falmouth, the latter of these being the closest mainland seat, with just 18 votes separating the Lib Dems and Tories.
As a result of these losses, and with the election in Thirsk and Malton being postponed due to a candidate's death, the Tories were left with just 296 MPs to 264 for Labour and 60 Lib Dems. David Cameron's hopes of governing alone were dead in the water, and if the abstention of the Sinn Fein MPs was considered, the Lib Dems could theoretically ally with either party to form a government.
No one could say for sure what the next government would look like after the results were announced.
(I hope the POD isn't too close to current politics for this to be acceptable btw!)