With just 8 days to go before the election, our target seat candidates need the help of every single one of us between now and polling day.
They have a huge amount to do and the more people we can talk to between now and polling day, the better the chance we have of filling up those green benches and once again being the third party in the House of Commons. That will guarantee us more media coverage and Ed will get two questions to the Prime Minister every week.
Our target seat candidates have been campaigning at high intensity for years. Some of them have completely given up other work this year to concentrate full time on their campaigns. That is a huge personal sacrifice. But it’s what we need to do to win.
The last thing we need to wake up to on 5th July is a string of near misses. Remember in the local elections, a handful more votes would have given us control of another 3 councils.
We know that the Conservatives are going to pull out all the stops in the last few days of the campaign to stop us winning. They are very worried about the scale of the losses we can inflict. On the For the Many Podcast last Friday, broadcaster Iain Dale said:
I hear on the grapevine that Conservative candidates in Conservative seats with a majority of, say 5000 or 6000, they are all being re-deployed to seats which have a majority of say 15,000 or 20,000.
He confirmed to co-host Jacqui Smith that this included candidates who are defending their seats.
“Apparently all their computer systems are being unplugged”, Dale added, to gasps from Smith, who responded “Oh my God, that’s hard core.”
Dale continued:
I do find it rather odd to re-deploy people in Conservative held seats. Fine if they are no-hoper seats. It’s what you have to do as a candidate but I know of several who have had this happen to them and they are basically told “If you won’t do this, you won’t ever get another seat again.”
He guessed that this instruction had come from Isaac Levido himself, joking “It’s a good job he’s not on performance related pay.”
You don’t have to actually go to a target seat to help out. Yes, if you can, please do, but you can also make calls from the comfort of your own home. It’s dead easy to set up and you can do it any time. However, if you want some company, you can join our regular maraphones. They happen Monday, Wednesday and Friday 7-9 pm and Sunday afternoons from 3 pm. You can find out all you need to know here.
If you are a Lib Dem member, you will likely have received communications asking you to go to a specific seat. Your social media feed may also have this information. Please, please, please act on it over the next few days.
This is the time to drop everything and help out where we are most likely to win. And after the election, it will be good to have a large number of MPs you can call on to come and help build your local campaign team to the next level. This really works. Back in the 90s, Chesterfield called on the support of nearby East Midlands seats during the General Election campaign and it was great to welcome so many who helped regularly. Then in peace time, Chesterfield sent out its significant campaigning resources to help win council seats and by-elections around the region.
Do use the comments to let us know where you will be going – and send us your photos of campaigning to help our target seat candidates win to [email protected].
We have a leader who has hit this campaign at the absolute top of his game, we have superb candidates who we need to have as superb MPs. All of them has done us proud. We have 8 days left. Let’s do this.
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6 Comments
I mean third party is the absolute minimum we should expect anything less would be considered a total failure of a campaign but there are a few polls that put the Lib Dems ahead of the Tories which would be an absolutely incredible result.
Latest prediction on Electoral Calculus puts us as the official opposition with 71 MPs and the Tories on 60. This is a once in a lifetime chance to change history.
I remember in 1997 I, together with another lifelong Liberal, was running a committee room for Labour in a seat Labour needed to win to form a government. It was really as plain as day that Labour had taken the seat but we didn’t feel able to relax until the result was declared at around 1.30 am.
And I shan’t count any chickens this time.
But won’t it be a novel experience to face feeling disappointed if the Lib Dems “only” get 60 or so seats and finish in third place?
It’s a shame the party hasn’t gone with the postcode checker this time around. Presumably for the understandable fear that a disloyal member might use it to leak info on where our target seats are (though with the Tory campaign in such disarray I’m not sure they’d be able to do much with this on this occasion)
But the current system of emailing members with the details of the single “nearest” target seat does seem to have resulted in some members getting told to go to a target seat which isn’t actually the easiest one for them to get to, and they’d not necessarily think to ask for an alternative unless they were already under the impression that another seat nearby was also being targeted.
I think the there are three estimates that suggests how many seats the Lib Dem’s will have come Friday morning. John Curtis in his sixty second view of polls suggested 50 seats, that would be a decent return. However in the last week we have seen traction in the polls, and a consistent poll rating of 11/ 12 percent, the best poll rating was 15%. I remember 1997 so well, the Lib Dem’s were bobbing along at 10% , and in the last week the polls moved, and on election night 16.5% got 46 seats, had the Lib Dem’s managed a further 1% nationally another ten seats would have turned gold. I have a feeling that the polls are understating the position of how well the Lib Dem’s are doing. I am going to make a prediction that on election night the final poll will be 14/ 15%. The targeting strategy is a good strategy. I heard a great story about the target seat of Chippenham . A local Lib Dem councillor had a rather good idea to use the resource of one of the towns Methodist churches! He got half the congregation to do leaflet runs for the local Lib Dem candidate, that approximately fifty volunteers. Good to see the Methodist liberal tradition alive and well. I think the poll which might give us a clue that the Lib Dem’s are going to take their target seats , will be the last of the Yourgov super poll due either Tuesday or Wednesday , it was these polls that predicted 2017 and 2019 election results.
@David LG East Kent was repeatedly told to go to Eastbourne. Not wishing to spend five hours driving for two hours activity, Dover went to Tunbridge Wells, thus reversing the ratio. I started going, to Paddock Wood, for the local elections (which we won) and just carried on with the same delivery round until my car broke down…. We got letters, emails and phone calls about Eastbourne, even after advice had changed – about a fortnight ago? time plays tricks in this situation – and LDHQ had decided Tunbridge Wells was worth it. It was interesting to see which seats LDHQ had in its sights at the end of the campaign. They customised 64 tally sheets for the count, with a blank at the end for the rest of us. Tunbridge Wells was among the 64.