Yellow fever or yellow bellies? Will the Liberal Democrat surge survive the election’s final rounds?

With the election now reaching its latter stages, Liberal Democrat HQ is preparing for a final push. In many senses this election has seemed new and yet, strangely, the same as ever. The leadership debates promised to change the face of British politics forever, and certainly, no future general election is likely to feature without them. But the last week now focuses very much on the old campaigning standards. Plenty of canvassing and the distribution of many, many leaflets! The Lib Dems have always been strong in this area, punching well above their weight despite limited resources. However, perhaps the question we need to ask is, how have the old campaigning methods meshed with new formats such as the debates?


On balance, the Liberal Democrats have been the winners of the leaders’ debates. Although it has been widely recognised that David Cameron and the Conservatives shaded the last debate, the seeming stability of the Lib Dem position is just as significant. As Lib Dem staff are constantly reminding one another, the bubble could still burst, but the real feeling is that the debates have fixed the party in a genuine three party, three horse race. Yes, left leaning support may slip back to Labour amid rumours of a Lib Dem-Conservative coalition and yes, floating voters may swing back to a resurgent Cameron, but given expectations at the start of the campaign, most Lib Dem supporters are more than satisfied with the campaign.

However, the leaders’ debates have presented new challenges as well as opportunities for the Lib Dems. Perhaps most notably, the prospect of ‘election fatigue’ seems a very real possibility among the electorate. For those campaigning for weeks, months even, in advance of and during an election campaign, this fatigue is nothing new. However, it is not necessarily something the electorate is so familiar with. The debates, while generally well received, have, for many people, been overly long. In fact, two debates would probably have struck a better balance – last night was, perhaps for many, a debate too far. Combined with the usual saturation of election stories in the print press, the electorate has been bombarded from all sides from new and old media – there’s been nowhere for the public to hide. Given the unusual aggression of the press and its often predictable partisanship, there is a concern that parties can overplay their hand at this point and incur diminishing returns.

In this environment, usual Liberal Democrat tactics may not thrive. The mailing of party literature has always been seen as a good way for the Lib Dems to by-pass the traditional media and get their message across to the electorate directly. When targeted very specifically at marginal seats, it has been remarkably effective. However, with the leaders’ debates embedding the Liberal Democrats in the minds of the electorate as a genuine, credible, viable party; is this still necessary? More importantly, do people want to receive literature three or four times telling them the same things? Equally, given the message that the Liberal Democrats are trying to get across – that they are very different from the two other parties and want to do things differently – is there a danger that using tried and trusted methods also used by the other parties tarnishes them with the brush of ‘old politics’. Perhaps, sometimes, finding new strengths is more important than relying on old ones. It’s a fine balancing act and it remains to be seen whether the Lib Dems’ remarkable story translates into success at the ballet box.