Election 2015: Leaders in last-ditch bid for votes

Party leaders and candidates are making a last-ditch pitch for votes on the final day of campaigning before the general election polls open.

Prime Minister David Cameron said the country was "stronger than it was five years ago" but there was "more to do".

Ed Miliband urged people to vote "to reward hard work in our country again" while Nick Clegg said the Lib Dems would offer "stability and decency".

Polls suggest no party will win enough seats for an outright majority.

BBC deputy political editor James Landale said politicians, pollsters and the media were struggling to read the election, leading many to focus on what might happen if there is an uncertain result.

"As such, Thursday might not be the end of the process," he said. "It might just be the calling of the half-time whistle."

On the last day of campaigning:

-  Cameron says the Conservatives can win Thursday's election outright

- Miliband says he is optimistic about Labour prospects and he trusts the public to make the "right judgement"

- Former top civil servant Lord O'Donnell said David Cameron could remain as PM even without a majority - it would be up to his        political judgement whether there was a "clear alternative" government

- Clegg says he's confident the Lib Dems will hold enough seats to be key players in any negotiations

- UKIP will "significantly and perhaps dramatically outperform" expectations, a spokesman predicts, while Green MPs would do all      they could to keep out the Tories, leader Natalie Bennett says

- SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon says her party is "within touching distance" of making Westminster history, while Leanne Wood says        her Plaid Cyu party is part of a "change that's coming"

- The Times newspaper endorses a continuation of the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition while the Express becomes the first paper      to recommend UKIP. The Daily Mail backs the Conservatives

- Northern Ireland's five biggest parties clashed over welfare reform and gay marriage in a live TV debate

The main party leaders have been criss-crossing the country in their battle buses as they attempt to drum up support ahead of Thursday's poll.

After starting the day in south Wales,  Cameron headed to north-west England and southern Scotland, while  Miliband is visiting Conservative-held marginal seats in the north of England.

Clegg, who set off from Land's End on Tuesday, is heading to John O'Groats through Scottish constituencies his party is hoping to retain.

The prime minister, whose Conservative Party won 307 seats in 2010, has renewed his attack on the possibility of a minority Labour government propped up by the Scottish National Party (SNP), saying it would face "huge questions of credibility".

Cameron insisted a Conservative victory was "within reach" but insisted that he would put "the country first" whatever the outcome of Thursday's poll by working to provide "strong and stable" government.

The Conservative leader said he had achieved a lot since 2010 but was "not satisfied" with current levels of deprivation and educational under-achievement in parts of the country and wanted to push harder on welfare and schools reforms.

"Is our country stronger than it was five years ago? Yes," he told BBC Radio 4's Today. "Is there more to do? Yes. But I would say stick with the team that is turning things around."

 Miliband is looking to improve on the 258 seats Labour won in 2010 under the leadership of former Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Labour's deputy leader Harriet Harman said her party could still win what she described as a "watershed election" for the NHS: "I don't think it (the health service) will survive as people want it to survive, and need it to survive, under the Tories."

 Clegg, whose Liberal Democrats are battling to keep hold of the 57 seats they won five years ago, is visiting marginal Scottish seats under threat from the SNP, telling voters: "You face the biggest political decision of your life."

He has sought to position his party as keeping any future coalition government "anchored" in the centre ground.

Without the Lib Dems, he said, "Labour or the Conservatives will be left to run a messy and unstable minority government, dependent on the SNP on the one hand or UKIP and the DUP on the other".

The SNP's Nicola Sturgeon, whose party is forecast to take a number of seats from Labour and the Lib Dems in Scotland, said the vote was an "opportunity for us to come together, to unite and link arms as one Scotland and vote SNP to make our voice heard"

Speaking in the marginal Lancashire seat of Pendle, the Labour leader said his party would have more activists on the ground on Thursday helping to get out the vote than the other parties combined.

He warned that another Conservative-led government "propped up by the Lib Dems" would "raid family budgets and cut the NHS".

"This is the clearest choice that has been put before the British public for a generation. Between a Tory government that is for the privileged few and a Labour government that puts working people first."