Okay, so the heady days of ‘Cleggmania’ – with the Lib Dems briefly in first place in the polls as high as 34% – did not last until election day itself.
Few of us expected it to, really, though it was delicious while it lasted. The fact that every single one of the nine final polls showed the Lib Dems in the 26-29% range, neck-and-neck with Labour, would have been beyond our wildest imaginations just one month ago.
But, still, there’s a percpetion in the media that the Lib Dems have somehow faded in the final week of the campaign – that, in the words of Labour home secretary Alan Johnson, the party has suffered a “slow puncture”. That misconception does deserve challenging, as it gets to the heart of why the media so often underestimate the Lib Dems’ strength.
Ask a journalist what they think would be the ideal situation for the Lib Dems, and they’d probably assume that we’d want a final last minute surge to build momentum going into polling day. I’m not going to deny that suddenly gaining an extra couple of per cent in the final polls wouldn’t have been nice – of course it would – but it probably wouldn’t make much actual difference to the outcome.
That’s because the Lib Dems’ success tonight will depend much more on the party’s ruthlessly effective targeting strategy – identifying the hundred or so seats where the party have a realistic chance of winning today, and developing the next tier of a hundred seats where the party might win the election after that.
And to deliver that kind of successful, focused targeting strategy requires resources. Money, yes, but, at least as importantly, able and willing volunteers ready to pound the streets delivering leaflets and identifying potential supporters.
What Nick’s win in the first debate achieved was to inspire a huge number of new supporters to become involved in the Lib Dem campaign early enough for it to make a real difference to tonight’s results. Had the surge happened any later it might have been too late for its effect to have been fully felt.
The Lib Dems’ targeting strategy has its critics, both within the party and beyond. But we will see its impact tonight. In 1983, when the Alliance polled 25% it won just 23 seats. Tonight, if the Lib Dems poll an equivalent percentage, we would expect to secure at least 75 seats. The simple truth is that under our first-past-the-post electoral system targeting is the only way for a party like the Lib Dems, with support spread across the country, to win anything like a reasonable number of seats.
A late surge might be a morale-booster for the Lib Dems, might have resulted in some more uplifting front-page headlines: but its effect in terms of seats won would most likely have been negligible. The early surge which Nick Clegg helped the party achieve will offer a far more enduring legacy for the party.
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11 Comments
There is also the issue of postal votes to consider – in some seats as many as 20% of the electorate used them – the LibDems where high in the polls just as the 1st postal votes hit the mats of the UK – this should help LD do better than expected
Good point, Mark. There’s also the issue of donations – the media’s reported £500k in small donations were raised by the party during the campaign. I doubt that would have happened, at least to that extent, without the early surge.
Postal votes is a white elephant. The postal votes ARE taken into account during polling – respondants are asked how that HAVE or WILL vote in the upcoming election. The only caveat is that the polling companies are legally barred from officially differentiating between those who have already voted (in postal votes) and those who are yet to vote.
In terms of the broader picture though Stephen, I agree. The early surge did inspire Lib Dems to get out there and fight for the election in a way that would simply not have happened otherwise. And targeting IS the only strategy that works for us in our non-democracy. Unfortunately, many of us who tried to get out there and help were not hoovered up, because the local parties were unprepared and thus unable to administer all of us. I ended up having to print off and deliver my own leaflets (from this site) in frustration.
SimonH – I think the point re postal votes is that if folk had already sent them in a late surge would have been too late to persuade them to change their minds. That’s a side issue from how good the opinion polls have been at neasuring Lib Dem support.
“And targeting IS the only strategy that works for us in our non-democracy” And yet, there was an opinion poll a while back which did not show that people overwhelmingly favoured the Lib Dem economic position. If you have the wrong policy, then maybe no amount of clever campaigning will help.
If you win the argument on policy and still get few MPs, that would strengthen the case for change
“If you win the argument on policy and still get few MPs, that would strengthen the case for change”
That’s precisely why we target nowadays, because without actual MPs people don’t believe we can change anything at all, and that their votes are wasted. Maybe you’re too young to remember the 1980s?
Anyway, there’s no indication that we have the ‘wrong’ policies. Most people like them when understood without the anti-Lib Dem veneer from the press.
I think this election will really emphasise to what extent we are a NATIONAL party with MPs in
Scotland
Wales
London
rural areas
semi-rural areas
urban areas
big cities: Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle, Sheffield
I’ve got a feeling no other party will achived that, with Tories basically in rural areas and outside the big cities in England, and Labour in Scotland, Wales, London,the big cites and some urban areas
JohnG,
Correct! And also I would suggest asking Sylvia Hermon, who will be elected as MP for North Down, whether she would like to join up… at which point, if she found herself able to agree with our platform, we would be the only party representing all four nations within the UK.
Mind you, http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/politics/election/nick-clegg-urges-northern-ireland-to-vote-alliance-14792628.html, has Nick Clegg claiming that Naomi Long (APNI) has a good chance of a surprise win, but if the polling data given in the Belfast Telegraph is right (Peter Robinson 42%, Trevor Ringland UCUNF 26%, Naomi Long Alliance 24%), it seems unlikely.
“Anyway, there’s no indication that we have the ‘wrong’ policies”
I just gave the indication. There was a poll where the Lib Dem did not come out on top on economic policies.
Why do you claim there is no indication?