On Wednesday night Simon Hughes was trying to explain the Liberal position; just as the Lib Dems have decided to change their tactics from being friendly with the tories to being slightly more harsh.
The Oldham East & Saddleworth By-Election has simply shown that the Conservative-Liberal Alliance is simply that; the Liberals are having to lean on the Conservatives to survive, I doubt that without Conservative tactical voting that the Liberals would have even held 2nd place in this seat. If you pay attention Of course this is speculative, and that the scenario meant that it was in the Conservatives interest for the Liberals to hold the seat. But the Liberals are going to have to work extra hard in order to ensure that they are not annihilated in this May's election; relying on Conservative Tactical voting will not help them one bit.
To put this result into perspective, the latest Polling Average (an average of all polls over 25 days) according to UK Polling Report is Con 38 (+2), Lab 42 (+14), LD 9 (-15). It is interesting to see that the shift in support away from the LDs has literally been replaced by the Conservatives (taking into account the +2).
By the looks of things here, the Conservatives were more than Soft-Peddling in Oldham; for such a large shift of support away from the Conservatives they must have been actively campaigning to get people to vote for the Liberals Tactically.
Then again, of course, I may be completely wrong; after all it is pretty much impossible to tell why every voter voted the way they did :-).
So will the Liberal change in tactics be enough to save their position? Well we'll have to see.
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