RBI and the British Elections

As published in the Guardian
May 6, 2005

More than the war
The Iraq conflict was not the only reason for the Liberal Democrats’ electoral gains, says Markos Moulitsas

The Liberal Democrats had high hopes coming in to the election. Pre-polling day chatter had them riding strong discontent with both Tony Blair and the Tories to make strong popular vote gains and gain 15-30 new parliamentary seats. They had, as they loved to remind people in literature, soundbites and on their website, become the “Real Alternative”.

The vehicle for those gains would be Iraq. “I think that Iraq has become all about the underlying issue of trust in the government,” the Liberal Democrat leader, Charles Kennedy, said.

“People feel, on a whole spectrum of issues, that they just cannot be sure what they are being told any longer by Tony Blair and by the government, and in that sense I think it really cuts through everything we have seen debated in the general election.”

Interestingly enough, the Iraq strategy was not designed to win votes on the war. “We found that voters had already discounted Blair on the war and trust issues,” Lib Dem consultant Rick Ridder said of focus group testing carried out in early February.

“It was already in the calculus, so new information didn’t change voter attitudes. What [those events] did was force greater attention to the Lib Dems. We moved up a couple of points – not because of the Iraq issue itself, but because the focus was on the other party.”

When the dust settled, the Lib Dems had gained four points from 2001, and won 11 additional seats: lower than hoped, but it still gave them plenty to be excited about.

“The real number is that the Lib Dems moved into second place in over 160 constituencies, which is 50 more than they had in 2001, so they’ve moved up increasingly as the alternative party,” Mr Ridder said.

“In a three party system, you have to get to second place before you can win. That’s the part I find most encouraging – winning central London seats and urban seats in the north. It’s no longer the party of Scotland and the rural west in England, which is what it was a few years ago.”

So how much of that could be attributed to the war? Matt Qvortrup, the chairman of the political science department at Robert Gordon University in Scotland, said the conflict played a role, but probably not a decisive one.

“I think the war was a major issue, but you have to be careful not to just look at the war,” he said. “Like in Inverness, where they won in a surprise, it wasn’t the war. It was local issues – economic, educational, the whole package. They made initial gains early on in the campaign when they weren’t talking about the war. The war probably solidified those gains.”

While the Lib Dems hoped the war would provide the “tipping point” toward big gains, Qvortrup suggested it was probably better that it didn’t. “The Lib Dems were able to be more than a single issue party,” he said.

Ridder said three factors helped propel Lib Dem gains: first, the “character issues related to Tony Blair”. That was why the Lib Dems (and the Tories, for a while), seized on allegations last weekend that Mr Blair had considered war with Iraq before having any rationale for the action. It was the issue of trust. Second, they focused heavily on education issues, particularly the raising of university fees. This allowed the Lib Dems to make substantial gains in university constituencies. “This bodes extremely well for the party’s future. Once you vote for a party, it’s one of the social activities you repeat,” Ridder said. “Once you get people locked in, it makes a huge difference.”

And only third does the war come up. “The war was an issue, but those people came in way before the election period,” Ridder added. “I don’t think you can discount it, but the education piece provided the lift.”

Many commentators today have complained about the unfairness of the results: the Lib Dems gained 22% of the vote, but just 10% of the seats. The Guardian’s Alan Travis made the startling observation that dividing the number of Labour MPs to their total votes yielded 26,858 per MP. For the Lib Dems, the number was 98,484.

However, Mr Qvortrup believes the Lib Dems played it smartly. “The way they have succeeded is by not spreading themselves too thinly on the ground by focusing on a relatively small number of seats,” he said. “In the places they have done that, they have by and large succeeded. Labour followed a similar strategy years ago, so one can say history is repeating itself.”

And he warned against putting too much stock on the number of seats gained, adding: “One must distinguish between seats and votes. I think they hoped they would have picked up more seats, but the important thing is that they were able to pick up votes from both Labour and Conservative voters.” Ridder noted that seven of eight Labour defectors went over to the Lib Dems.

With 62 seats and second place in 160 more constituencies, that “Real Alternative” slogan might start to gain some legitimate currency.