The Liberal Democrats and the need to move away from the ‘Core Vote Strategy’
After the catastrophe of 2015, when the Liberal Democrats were reduced to eight seats and 8% of the vote, the party needed a serious strategic overhaul. The 20% core vote strategy developed by Mark Pack and David Howarth provided it. It argued that survival required cultivating and appealing to a voting bloc rooted in a younger, more tolerant and pro-remain base. And that foundation could carry the party through difficult cycles.
At the time, that was exactly what we needed. The result has been 72 Liberal Democrat MPs, a series of impressive local by-election results, and institutional power to present as essential to any coalition of the left-centre. It’s what attracted young professionals like me, looking to an alternative to the chaos in Westminster, to join in the first place.
But strategy cannot remain stagnant. The political environment of 2026 is radically different from that of 2015. Voters are simply less loyal to parties, demographics are shifting, and the two main parties are being replaced by insurgent movements. The Labour Party for example has fallen sharply in national vote share since the 2024 election, dropping from 35% to around 21% in recent polling. And the Conservative party faces extinction on the right. And yet the Liberal Democrats have barely moved still hovering around 13% in the latest polls. As the third largest party we should be filling that void.
So what’s holding us back?
The obstacle facing the Liberal Democrats today is not the absence of a clearly defined ideology. It is the absence of perceived viability and the failure to fully capitalise on systemic volatility.
New polling from YouGov, seems to answer some of the puzzle. Among Britons who do not currently intend to vote Liberal Democrat: 31% say they simply don’t know enough about the party and 26% believe voting Lib Dem would be a wasted vote nationally.
The good news from this data is that voters are not primarily worried about our values, the party has broad appeal. They are worried about whether we can win.
The benefits of a broader election strategy
The new centre right conservative movement Prosper UK polled that 28% of Britons, almost one in three, believe no political party represents their views. Even more strikingly, Liberal Democrat voters are the most likely of any party’s supporters to say this. The new strategy must appeal to an era defined by disaffection.
The assumption traditionally was that voters could be organised into a coherent, loyal bloc which around the election could be supplemented by swing voters into an effective campaign base. However, today’s electorate is fluid, sceptical and conditional, the complete abandonment of the main two parties demonstrates this. We need to compete for the disaffected voter far better.
The opportunity is not simply to consolidate liberal professionals. It is to mobilise the politically homeless, the voters drifting between parties, especially those who vote tactically. That can only be done with a new core of ideas.
Digital Infrastructure
It’s easy to suggest that the party needs a social media rethink, but it’s the truth. Ed Davey has been excellent in this regard, but the party needs a more coherent overall strategy. The Greens have developed their own media ecosystem with Bold Politics and the affiliated left wing digital outlets. Reform and the Tories have GB News, and the majority of the country’s traditional media.
The problem is we have no natural home in the current digital landscape. This means we need to build our affiliated media, support creators who share our views, increase appearances on non-traditional media, and make sure we’re going to unfriendly media to show people we are the real mirror to Reforms divisiveness. If we don’t go to opposition news to put forward our views, are we really even the alternative?
Raising our leader’s profile
We have great capable leaders. Daisy Cooper, Sarah Olney, Al Pinkerton to name a few, are all serious competent operators. Let make sure the outreach strategy can ensure the party’s voice is heard on key issues. That can only happen when you can present the public with bold stark polices.
Bold Policies
The party has always thrived when we can show our values around core issues. There is no point having the best policy if we cannot summarise and present it in a way that sticks with the electorate. I despise the three-word slogan as much as the next person but in a politics centred around attention, we need to ensure our solutions stick to the public conscience. The only way to do this is by having a simple core message, backed by excellent policy.
The way we stop Reform, and the Greens is no longer by appealing just to the base.
It’s by seizing the opportunity to become the natural home for millions who currently feel politics has no home for them.
* Dimitri Roberto a Liberal Democrat member, currently studying History and Politics at UCL and working in public relations.
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33 Comments
I like most of the suggestions about how we can do better but I do feel we have to clarify the problem.
The headline should really ask “Why aren’t we doing better in The Opinion Polls ? ”
Last May we took nearly a quarter of The Seats, a poor second to Reform but well ahead of everyone else. In Local By-elections we do even better, coming equal first with Reform.
None of this means that The “Polls” are wrong, just that they don’t give us the whole truth.
I’m not at all convinced that the 72 MP’s elected in 2024 were anything to do with adopting a Core Vote strategy advocated by two people in 2015.
As some of us pointed out back in 2015/16,one problem with a Core Vote strategy is that FPTP elections are not won by appealing to exclusive Core Voters. Labour for example ‘discovered’ this reality in 1983 and the Conservatives are still struggling to comprehend it post Boris, Brexit and Truss.
Another problem was that the Howard/Pack target voters only tend to exist in concentrations in Urban seats with Universities and lot of students and graduates. Annoyingly, for Liberal Democrats most such seats have tended to see the progressive vote support Labour, especially after the 2010-2015 Coalition Government.
Meanwhile the string of by election successes referred to as paving the way to 2024, were in Leave voting rural seats which the Core Vote strategy would have ruled out as non fertile ground.
The only election that was fought on anything approaching a Core Vote strategy was 2019 when we fell from 12 to 11 seats!
“This means we need to build our affiliated media, support creators who share our views, increase appearances on non-traditional media, and make sure we’re going to unfriendly media to show people we are the real mirror to Reforms divisiveness.”
I like this. Mathew Hulbert does it a lot now, with his debates on GB News and Talk TV, arguing the liberal case in the face of right-wing populism. We need to increase this sort of thing, and then some!
@Paul “As some of us pointed out back in 2015/16,one problem with a Core Vote strategy is that FPTP elections are not won by appealing to exclusive Core Voters.” The strategy was not to appeal exclusively to existing core voters but to expand our core. The estimate that you need 20% of the electorate to consider themselves as Liberal Democrat by default before we can win a general election was probably valid though it may have decreased with the new multi-party system. Obviously on top of that core vote, we would still need to layer large numbers of non-core voters who like the leader or the candidate or a topical policy or who will vote tactically. We probably did better at the layering than building the core.
When I first became interested in politics, my dad – a Labour supporter – explained that the trade unions fought for working people to get a better deal at work and the Labour Party fought to win the power so give working people a better deal in all aspects of life. He described the Tories as the enemy of the working people since they representing the rich and those who benefitted from capitalism. When I asked about the Liberals, he said to ignore them because they were just Tories but with a conscience.
Perhaps once of the challenges the Liberal Democrats face is that Labour no longer fights for the working class – it has expelled socialists from membership as it moves to fully embrace capitalism….today Labour are, in truth, Tories with a conscience. So where do the Liberal Democrats fit in this new political spectrum? The Greens are on our left, advocating for socialist environmentalism. The Labour Party is to our right in so many policy areas. But we do not fit in between Labour and the Greens – we see the world differently.
Rather than taking sides in the battle between Capital and Labour, we take forward the fight for individual liberty. We need to flesh out what this would look like in practice and then built our support on that foundation.
Whilst not in any way suggesting that strategies are not important, these are nothing unless we give ourselves a clear identity in the eyes of the electorate.
How many times do we have to say this? For great swathes of the population we are anonymous! They have no idea what our bedrock mission is. There is no point waffling about a policy for this or a policy for that if we do not also trumpet – all the time – what Liberalism stands for.
Are we so incapable of doing this? What’s the problem?
Why would we not do it?
@Peter. Yes, but if policy and press/media are concentrated on Core Vote issues it will contain emphasis that variously doesn’t appeal to, seems irrelevant to, or even deters the wider range of voters.
The current Conservative emphasis on trying to out Reform Reform, leaves the ‘Centre Ground’ wide open to other Parties. Conservative Home everyday contains bitter rows between Con members who think that is a good thing against those who think it is electoral suicide.
Labour went through the same long and bitter process after the ‘longest suicide note in history’ manifesto of 1983. Tony Benn said that their [low] share of the vote that year was a ‘triumph for socialism,’ as never before had so many people voted for a purely socialist manifesto. It took them 14 years and Tony Blair before they next attracted enough voters to win a General Election.
Both Reform and the Greens are doing better in recent years now they are no longer single issue Parties.
Policy is not determined by strategy. Press/media was not concentrated on Core Vote issues. There was almost no overlap between our campaign material and what we discuss interminably on LibDem voice. The intention was to create a core of voters who looked at the Liberal Democrats and thought “That’s us”. I don’t think we entirely succeeded.
‘having a simple core message, backed by excellent policy.’
This. Absolutely this.
My local council has spent ages on discussion groups with residents to come up with some nice-sounding woolly scheme about ’empowerment’ and ‘visions’ and ‘relationships ‘and ‘building resilience’… To which a Reform councillor cut to the chase with something like: “Sounds nice, but does that mean the potholes will be fixed?”
So maybe not three-word slogans, but plain answers to issues that are important to everyone. And clear proposals that are distinct from what others are offering.
The basics of food (including farming/food security), water (pollution), and shelter (housing) might be a good start.
The danger of slugging it out with Reform on their culture wars nonsense, btw, is that it plays into their ‘metropolitan elite vs Nigel the Man of the People’ thing. A better way to see them off is to offer something positive to offer the ‘left behind’ who are primarily turning to Reform in the forlorn hope their lives might get better if they do.
@Peter. I agree that, usually, Press/media has not been concentrated on so called Core Vote issues. Which is why I opened by disagreeing with the assertion that the Core Vote strategy advocated by 2 people in 2015, was not in fact responsible for the 72 MP’s we elected in 2024. Or indeed for the 3 successive previous best results we got in 1997, 2001 and 2005, when we took over 60 seats.
The exception was the 2019 campaign when everything was about ‘Bollocks to Brexit’ and even press comment about say the NHS, also included a punch line on how these problems would be easier to deal with if only we ignored the Referendum result and stayed within the EU.
That campaign also saw us adopt what Mark Pack had written about as a Pivot strategy. Activists were imperiously ordered not to go to seats which over the years had been building activity and vote share but were the ‘wrong sort of seat.’ Instead they were told to go to seats which, following the study of opinion polling (or was it sacrificial goat’s entrails?) were deemed to have the right sort of socio economic makeup plus enough Remain voters to sweep us from a distant 3rd place and little local organisation to victory.
That Core Vote and pivoting strategy was of course a failure and instead of the predicted 200 gains we fell from 12 to 11 seats.
YouGov have some interesting Polling on Tactical Voting, asking how people would vote if only two Parties had a chance.
The Libdems beat Reform, Labour & The Tories &, marginally, The Greens.
Our biggest weakness is the perception that we are weak. There may be opportunities to shift this perception quickly but We can only look out for those opportunities, not create them.
Our best hope is to build up Our Local Bases, Electing more Councillors. Actually We are doing well on this front, coming second Last May & way ahead of Labour & The Greens.
Lets not run ourselves down, we have real problems but we are on the up at the grassroots, where it matters.
This article has presumably been sent in to LDV from a parallel universe where we actually adopted Pack and Howerth’s core vote strategy.
We’ve certainly not adopted most of its key recommendations (besides OMOV which I don’t think has done much), and our current leader very clearly isn’t interested in speaking to “open tolerant centre left” voters as the strategy refers to them and we fell significantly backward at the GE in seats dominated by these voters.
The only party doing this right now are the Greens, Id say our failure to have the same appeal is THE reason that we are struggling in the polls right now. We’ve deliberately avoided providing people with strong ideological reasons for people to vote for us so the main votes we get are people wanting to keep the Tories out (who only live in seats where we are larger than labour, the greens and SNP) and people who like what we are doing in there area, which is great for already thriving local parties but makes it harder for us to grow elsewhere.
Admittedly we do now seem to be trying to develop a core vote now, only a rather different one from what the strategy recommends, in that Ed Davey has made clear publicly and privately to members that he wants us to be the party for Moderate Tories, one problem with this is that there are very few of them left.
North of the Watford Gap – and outside of leafy suburbia inhabited by the lanyard brigade – lies parallel universe.
The locations of the lost deposits by the Greens & Libdems at the last GE is a stark reminder of that.
@David le Grice
Yes – my external impression of Lib Dem “appeal” at the moment, beyond the usual “well, at least they’re not the other lot” for by-elections which both Reform and Greens are eating into, is that the party is for people who think things are basically fine right now, and want some steady competent managerialism to keep it that way. To actually be the party the Conservatives *pretended* to be, perhaps.
In the seats where people are generally well-off enough to want that sort of thing it’s a strong message, especially with the implosion of the actual Conservatives into a Reform-lite remnant. It’s a message where having been in coalition with the Cameronite Conservatives is a positive. For ex-Conservatives, a non-Labour party can deliver this more believably than Starmer. It probably won’t win a general election but it should reliably deliver a solid core of seats in the South of England.
It’s just a bit unfortunate that this doesn’t seem to be the direction most of the party’s activists (as opposed to MPs) actually want to take, and it’s not a direction one can add many policies to without contradicting the “support the status quo” messaging.
Cim’s analysis seems to me perceptive re the party’s position in the Home Counties and London, but it doesn’t explain our huge successes in the South West, which is not particularly prosperous and where a lot of voters are thoroughly fed up with the status quo. Following the implosion of Labour and the Tories most South West seats should now be a battle between Reform and the LibDems. Our new South West MPs seem to be doing well but to win more we need to articulate our own “change” programme; and also to ditch any local understandings we may have had with Labour in 2025.
As an ex-Lib Dem I would suggest that the current party comes across as being ‘the party of protest for posh areas’. You look like you welcome refugees, and any kind of development everywhere else in the country but your own (generally posh) areas. Sending out repeated messages that we need to fix social care is not helpful – everyone knows that, the question is how? Ed Davey might get his picture on the news doing his various stunts, but that makes him look like a clown and not a PM in waiting. I am afraid that the coalition still hangs over the Lib Dems as well.
“Ed Davey has made clear publicly and privately to members that he wants us to be the party for Moderate Tories, one problem with this is that there are very few of them left”
Have a look at this: https://prosperuk.com/about/ and this https://conservativehome.com/2026/01/26/david-gauke-the-conservatives-will-live-longer-if-they-prosper/ They deserve careful reading.
The Prosper UK group of moderate Tories claims “22 million people consider themselves to be in the centre or the centre right. Nearly a third of those people – 7 million – consider that no political party adequately represents their views”.
Kemi Badenoch has told the “Prosper” group to “get out of the way”. Where will those 7 million voters go? There is a gap in the centre a mile wide, and it ought to be easy for us to fill it. Look at Paul Baker’s post above.
I know one of the signatories to Prosper UK’s declaration – he was until last May my county councillor, leader of that council and a perfectly decent man. I am told he is going around saying he is a liberal.
There is a potential realignment similar to the 1920s as the Tory party fragments and the Labour party discover that socialism is historically past its sell by date. I think Ed Davey is on to something, and I suspect significant numbers of the parliamentary party are on side.
Socially and economically liberal and internationalist is where the Liberal Democrats should sit.
Some of us have warned for 2 years that the Greens are not our friends, more the opposite. We have to emphasise the stupidity of some of their policies in particular those affecting our national security..
Our direction as a political movement lies in the voluntary and community sector ,the state does not have all the answers ,and it heavily burdened by authoritarian strings attached ,the private sector cannot solve all of our problems at a cost we can afford but the more agile and flexible third sector has proven to be adaptable and like the lady says Liberal Democrats are good at fixing the church or community building roof . linked to the green and circular economy we can come forward with fresh ideas for the post industrial society .
> “Why aren’t we doing better in The Opinion Polls ? ”
Very good question. Back in the Major era I used to have a rule of thumb – where I was – that our approximate support was 14% base + 5% ANTI = 19%. Variances from this needed explanation. Such as the other lot making a mistake. I always knew that the ANTI vote would one day disappear if something like UKIP turned up. Which is did. The base figure would wither if we were less active. But is was usually 10+%. Which we could verify with regular data that we entered into EARS and analysed and shared.
So UKIP took away the ANTI vote. The Coalition depressed the base figure for a while. But a forgetting factor allowed it to drift up again.
We have done X and Y and Z. So why are we not at 20% with plans for ratcheting up?
We have changed tools. Got better IT. Tried several things. Have had time to do experiments. Operate in many constituencies, regions, and nations.
We cannot even agree here what the strategy has been the last few years and now.
Carry on doing the same thing, hope for a better result? It is quite baffling.
Tristan,
The problem with the idea of ‘moderate Tories’ is that the assumption is made across British politics and journalism that ‘moderation’ and ‘being socially liberal’ are the same thing and the party’s own desire when it says these things, that they be mutually compatible with and acceptant of historic Lib Dem values on democracy and various other in-party touchstones.
It remains entirely possible to hold personally conservative views on some social topics, yearn for a society characterised by self-restraint and a broad-based common moral code but to be instinctively anti-authoritarian in terms of how the State operates in the lives of individuals.
Equally one could be centrist on economics and profoundly uninterested in a more democratic society, and see government as a service provider who should shut up and clean the streets for the lowest possible price.
Which moderate Tories do you want? Will you be able to get all the people with all the values you or others in the party think they want and will they come with other views in tow you don’t necessarily want? How do you stop that?
As multiple other parties or media outlets create wedge issues to break up the voting coalitions of the their enemies, will these voters hold together and move as a group towards the Lib Dems?
So – Until 2008, the Lib Dems took a clear “Centre-Left” position.
Then along came Clegg and his coup, and the Lib Dems suddenly embraced Right-wing Coalition politics. They duly got hammered in 2015.
The Lib Dems then concentrated on distancing themselves from the Coalition, attacking the Tory government, and broadly positioning themselves as somewhat to the Left of Labour.
But now that Badenoch has left some Prosper pink Tories politically homeless, what could the Lib Dems do? Why, tack swiftly back Rightwards, of course, to try to grab a new bunch of potential voters!
All this leaves me amazed that Yougov don’t find even more voters who “simply don’t know enough” about the Lib Dems!
To add:
OK, Vicar of Bray politics sometimes works, despite being inherently ridiculous. Yes, there are plenty of pink Tories wondering where they belong, so for those who don’t care how cynical or silly they might look, why shouldn’t the Lib Dems make a play for those votes?
Well, as Matt (Bristol) points out, they are a disparate bunch. What appeals to some of them will appal others. Tricky. There’s also a deeper problem – Whose side do they want to be on – Farage’s side, or the anti-fascist side?
Labour and Green, even if spitting blood at each other, will be de facto “stop Farage” allies. What about the Lib Dems?
They will need to choose. They could – and should – clearly stand out against Farage. When attacked for being the handmaidens to dangerous lefties like Polanski and Rayner / Burnham, they should boldly declare in favour of the broadest front to beat Farage. But then they will lose many of the “Prosper” voters.
Or they could choose to sit on the fence, or even worse, to claim (as Clegg did) that they would be a moderating influence by entering coalition with the Right. Then they would lose a different large group of potential voters.
Ain’t life tough sometimes, if you want to play Vicar of Bray politics?
Final hint from me – Don’t!
I’m not completely convinced we need a grand change of strategy. After all, we’ve gone into an election before with a clear, bold message that most people knew about and were clear about what we stood for. It was 2019 – we were standing for stopping Brexit – and it won us 11 seats. I’m going to take more convincing that we should be abandoning a strategy which won us a record number of MPs and saw us beat the Tories and Labour in last year’s local elections.
Barry Smith: I’m not convinced that the 2019 election result proves that a clear, bold message is a bad idea. A bad message is a bad idea!
Jo Swinson told a disbelieving electorate that she was a natural Prime Minister in waiting. The voters didn’t like the sound of that!
As to “stopping Brexit”, that was also very badly mis-campaigned. To quote Wikipedia:
“The Liberal Democrats originally pledged that if they formed a majority government, which was considered a highly unlikely outcome by observers, they would revoke the Article 50 notification immediately and cancel Brexit. Part-way through the campaign, the Liberal Democrats dropped the policy of revoking Article 50 after the party realised it was not going to win a majority in the election.”
Egg on face!
I agree with David Allen that we should not switch around on basic policies and decisions just to try to stay in line with what the polls show either nationally or in particular seats. That leads to loss in credibility. Even though we are up against lack of media attention, we must stick to basic beliefs and policies and persuade people over and over again.
As to lack of media attention, the worst of this is that the good speeches we make in Parliament gets so little attention our MPs need to spend more time going around the country forging a movement OUTSIDE Parliament.
Nigel is absolutely right when he says ‘our MPs need to spend more time going around the country forging a movement OUTSIDE Parliament’.
I would just be one step more specific by saying “Almost all of our new MPs need to spend much more time going around their constituencies forging a movement to support their re-election in their local area. Currently I would say that very few of them realise just how difficult getting re-elected will be. So unless they are happy to be a one hit wonder and leave it to their local activists to pick up the debris after 2029, they need to double and re-double their efforts in their home patch.
I’m not sure where the current view is coming from, be it the central bureaucracy, the leadership itself, or those influential people near the centre most of whom got it so wrong in 2014-15, but it is totally misconceived. It is almost as if people believe the Farron report that the the last election was so successful because we had great admin. It wasn’t. We won because the Tories almost totally collapsed, Reform stole enough of their votes to let us through, tactical voting was much more effective that time, the Greens were not perceived as a real option and Labour were almost universally weak in seats we could win.
It is very likely to be lot more difficult next time with Labour in danger of collapse, Reform on the up, the Greens eating into our vote and the Nats being up again.
@ Matt (Bristol)
“Which moderate Tories do you want? ”
At one level I don’t much care. What I do care about is getting as many Xs in the box marked Lib Dem.
And I really do care about having as many MPs as possible (and ideally a government) whose aims are to build and safeguard a fair, free and open society, and that promotes liberty, equality and community, and to prevent enslavement by poverty, ignorance or conformity.
Clearly those who do put their X in the Lib Dem box – where ever they come from) – must not feel they are betrayed by Lib Dems promoting the preamble in office.
My social media feed has just popped up a post from Prosper UK to the effect that:
21% of “former Conservatives” would today vote for “left leaning parties” and a further 20% don’t know/would not vote. That’s about 3 million voters.
(33% have gone to Reform and 25 are sticking with the Tories)
@ David Allen
Whose side do they want to be on – Farage’s side, or the anti-fascist side?
My current feeling (based on canvassing for a district council by election in a very red-wally ward that went from Conservative to Reform last May at county level) is that many will come out anti-reform. I think we will come first or second. So will Reform. Very many soft Conservative voters are appalled by Farage and all he stands for- see the Prosper UK polling mentioned above.
Incidentally I think the suggestion that the Lib Dems could be anything other than “stop Farage” is absurd.
I disagree with the OP as I don’t think a core vote strategy was followed at all between 2019-24. The approach was to focus on targeting seats. The Lib Dems did win 72 MP’s but the evidence that this was because of party strategy rather than other factors e.g. the Conservative vote collapsing is rather limited.
What the Lib Dems need now is a “dual vote” rather than a core vote strategy i.e. go after 2 sets of voters at the same time, namely green voters (liberal-left) and soft tories (centre to centre right). Developing a narrative to appeal to both groups is the key e.g shifting the tax burden “from people to polluters”.
Paul Holmes, Davd Evans and Edward have summed upmost of my felings about this.
I have seen several of the online reeels and posts by the Green Party candidate in Gorton and Denton, and what comes over most to me is that she comes accross as a normal human being from Manchester and not just another identikit politician.
We used to have MPs who were just as relateable, David Penhaligon and Charles Kennedy to name but two. But would a female plumber with unruly hair ever get selected as a Liberal Democrats candidate in a key by-election I wonder?
The voters of Gorton and Denton seem to have soundly rejected middle-of-the-road politics in favour of the politics of care and hope. The BBC, tellingly, cut out Hannah’s victory remark that people work hard just to line the pockets of the super-rich, but the younger generation seem to now realise how democracy in this country has been sold out for decades to the power of big corporations and non-elected financiers. Hence the Green Party’s ‘Bold Politics’.
Yes, we are largely anonymous to voters, but can they be inspired by us promising what they will see as tweaks to the status quo? Daisy Cooper told the City: “We believe we can give people a sense of hope, end the cost of living crisis and build the UK’s future by all of us for all of us together.” Let’s tell everyone how.