The Liberal Democrats made too much of the Eastleigh by-election

Liberal Democrat activists have remained remarkably cheerful despite our abysmal national opinion poll ratings and our failure to score even one per cent of the vote at the Rochester and Strood by-election in November.

The chief reason for this may be an earlier by-election in this parliament, Eastleigh, which we held in defiance of many predictions.

But I wonder if we did not make too much of Eastleigh. For the Liberal Democrat vote fell substantially - Mike Thornton received 32.1 per cent, against the 46.5 per cent Chris Huhne recorded at the 2010 general election.

The reason we held the seat despite this decline was that the Conservatives and Ukip split the anti Lib Dem vote almost evenly.

And we aided both by a spectacularly bad Conservative candidate and an inept campaign. Having chosen a right-wing headbanger to carry the Tory flag, their campaign slogan appeared to be:

"Ukip are right about everything but you mustn't vote for them."

Nor I am convinced that holding the seat despite our previous MP being jailed was such an achievement. I doubt that the thought of asking someone else to take your speeding points is particularly shocking to many votes - a theory that early coverage of the by-election rather supported.

Indeed, while I have been told many times over the years that Chris Huhne is unpopular with lots of Lib Dem activists, I have never come across any evidence to support this idea.

The reality was that he was a popular MP, the Liberal Democrat council was exceptionally well run, the constituency party was large and active, and that the national party put in an extraordinary effort.

Add all these factors together and it does not seem such a surprise that we held Eastleigh.

There are reasons for Liberal Democrats to be cheerful, notably the constituency polls that Lord Ashcroft published in the autumn of last year. Many of these show both the Liberal Democrat and Conservative votes declining and us holding on surprisingly easily in some seats,

And I am not worried that Nick Clegg will lose Sheffield Hallam. This is not so much that I believe Nick is immensely popular as because I cannot picture Labour winning a prosperous suburban seat like this.

But I think we may have been guilty, quite understandably given the avalanche of bad news over the past years, of making more of the Eastleigh by-election than it warrants.

More evidence that Lib Dem MPs can beat the opinion polls

It has been common, at least since Mike Thornton won the Eastleigh by-election, for Liberal Democrats to argue that those who say we will be all but wiped out at the next general election are mistaken. Never mind the opinion polls, our MPs are popular and good campaigners, so they have a sporting chance of keeping their seats.

More evidence for this view comes from the October issue of Total Politics.

The magazine asked the members of YouGov's online panel about their satisfaction with their own MP. The results were startling:

if you’re a Conservative and you have a Labour MP, you can be forgiven for being predisposed to being dissatisfied with what they’re doing, and vice versa. 

But Lib Dem MPs appear to be able to reach across that divide. Even among non-Lib Dem voters, Lib Dem MPs scored +7. Amongst Lib Dem-voting respondents who had a Lib Dem MP, the score was an astonishing +61. 

We need to be cautious here: once you cut the data in a normal-sized survey down to focus just on Lib Dem voters (of whom there are currently not many) and who have Lib Dem MPs (of whom there are even fewer), you’re soon down to very small numbers of respondents and large margins of error. 

Still, while all MPs do better among those who will vote for that party than those who won’t, Lib Dems appear to be able to connect with non-supporters in a way that neither Labour nor Conservative MPs can.

The poll also found that

the views of those who've contacted their local MP about that MP are almost entirely dependent on how satisfactory the contact was. This relationship holds true regardless of the party leanings of the constituent.