It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing To borrow that Duke Ellington song, poll ratings don’t mean a thing if you ain’t got the swing you need in target seats. The 48% Remain vote is certainly a big pool of voters for the party to fish in nationally, but as the above two tables from the ever-excellent Anthony Wells show, there are only six seats (four Conservative, two Labour) which voted Remain in the referendum and where the Liberal Democrats finished less than 10% behind in 2015. Or, to draw the net slightly differently, as Roberto Robles pointed out,, there are only 17 seats where the Liberal Democrats came second in 2015 which both voted Remain and have a less than a 10,000 majority for the party to overcome. There are, however, good reasons not to be too locked into a mantra of ‘look at those big majorities; no way the Lib Dems will win those seats’. One reason is simply Scotland in 2015. All the comments about how Labour wasn’t really going to lose that many seats as they had such huge majorities turned out wrong. Another is that even when there is a small national vote movement, the Liberal Democrats have massively bucked the trend in individual seats. Back in 2005, for example, although the Lib Dem vote only went up 4% nationally, I ran a campaign which overturned a 10,000 plus Labour majority. The prior write-up of that majority as “probably impregnable” by Dod’s is firmly lodged in my list of favourite political quotes. What’s more, there are signs that the Liberal Democrats can overturn huge majorities in seats once again: not only victory in Richmond Park but also the very strong showing for the party in early Manchester Gorton canvassing. Despite the Liberal Democrats starting the aborted Gorton by-election nominally on the 4% secured in 2015, the evidence was very strong that the party had already leapt upwards to a strong and challenging second place by the time the by-election was cancelled. Moreover, many of the seats which voted Leave that are on the lists above are ones where the Liberal Democrats held the seat until 2015 and where the defeated Liberal Democrat MP is standing again. This is the big factor to watch out for: are the Lib Dems toast in such seats, or are the Lib Dems able to win in them, giving the party an ability to get up to well above those low numbers which the ‘small majority plus voted Remain’ calculations give? Again, there’s a promising straw in the wind on this: the Liberal Democrat in council by-elections has been going up more in areas which voted Leave than in areas which voted Remain. It’s a bit of a puzzle as to why, in part explained by the way the Remain cause has helped the party recruit high-quality candidates and volunteer organisers. Even though the campaigns in those winning council by-elections in Leave areas have sometimes avoided Europe completely, the quality of the candidates and campaigns are still heavily down to the Remain effect. The verdict then on this factor? Seat results combined with referendum voting set out a tough playing field for the Liberal Democrats, but it is one the party can prosper heavily on if seats such as Eastbourne (voted Leave, popular Lib Dem MP re-standing) or Oxford West and Abingdon and Vauxhall (big Conservative / Labour majority but huge Remain vote) can be put into play. Watch out to see where Tim Farron visits during the general election proper, and in particular where party members are urged to go and help, to judge how this is turning out.