The psephological sharks are circling as senior figures fear party will be lucky to hold 30-35 of the 57 seats it won in 2010

The code names are a clue that someone of a military frame of mind is in charge of the Liberal Democrat election campaign. The chief campaign committee is called the wheelhouse, after the room from which a ship is steered. The day after the 7 May polling day is termed P+1 – just as D-Day planners called the day after the invasion D+1.

Paddy Ashdown, a former commander in the Special Boat Squadron, knows his job as chairman of his party’s election campaign is one of the toughest of his career; he is charged with steering his party and its leader Nick Clegg safely past some of the most perilous electoral rocks ever to confront the Lib Dems.

To paraphrase a Tory opponent, Lord Ashdown and Clegg are pressing all the flashing red buttons on the ship’s dashboard in the hope that one of them will restart the engines. Phone-ins, apologies, chat shows – everything is being tried to revive Clegg’s personal fortunes.

Senior party figures fear, however, that on a good day the Lib Dems will be lucky to hold 30-35 of the 57 seats they won in 2010. Opinion polls show the Lib Dems struggling to make double figures and with no hope of matching the 23% share of the vote the party secured five years ago. Deposits for candidates are going to be lost all over the country.

Lib Dems hit 25-year low in poll Read more

One recent YouGov poll suggested that the party faces an almost complete wipeout in its two heartlands of south-west England, where it could lose 12 of its 15 seats, and Scotland, where it could lose 10 of its 11 seats. Amid such dire poll ratings, party strategists acknowledge that Danny Alexander, the chief secretary to the Treasury, is in deep trouble in Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey while Clegg trails Labour by three points in his Sheffield Hallam seat, according to a poll by Lord Ashcroft.

Defeat for Clegg and Alexander would decapitate the party in the event of a hung parliament and make its likely behaviour on the day after polling day a mystery.

But Clegg remains cheerfully certain he will retain his seat and positive that he took the only decision available to him by going into government with the Tories in 2010. “There is a deep sense across the party that its record in government is insufficiently acknowledged,” the Clegg team insists. It also says this may be the inevitable fate of junior coalition partners throughout Europe, who are invariably punished at the next election. “You pay an identity price,” one senior figure said. “Once in government, you lose your status as the ‘none of the above party’,” he added.

Those in the wheelhouse say the Lib Dem vote is holding up in the party’s fortress seats, as long as Labour supporters vote tactically to keep the Tories out. The party is polling heavily in its key marginals and claims to have an intimate knowledge of what is driving voters in key seats.

One strategist said: “What we are going to find in our world is that in places where we are not strong – and where we piled up votes in previous elections because of our position on Iraq or because people were fed up with Gordon Brown but didn’t trust the Tories – there is a risk that we will suffer disproportionate declines. Where we are strong, the evidence on the ground is that we are doing much better than the national opinion poll ratings would indicate. This is a general election where there are going to be big issues about the future of the country, but there will also be a sense of 650 byelections.”

The reputation and work rate of the incumbent MP will be critical. Many will want to emphasise what they have done in their constituency rather than at Westminster.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Paddy Ashdown is in charge of leading the Lib Dems past some large electoral rocks. Photograph: Murdo Macleod

Ryan Coetzee – the party’s general election director of strategy, who played a key role in reviving the fortunes of the Democratic Alliance in his native South Africa – has spent a small fortune polling in the party’s 57 seats. Analysis of those polls gave the party its key campaign insight: its chances are best in “Tory-facing seats” and less good in seats, such as Redcar, where Labour is the main challenger. In its Labour-facing seats, the late rise of the Greens possibly splitting the left vote may be the party’s best hope.

But the campaign will primarily focus on winning over “soft Tories” who want to support a party with economic credibility but take fright at George Osborne’s plans to complete the fiscal consolidation in the next parliament solely through spending cuts and with no tax increases other than cracking down on avoidance. One senior figure described the strategy as persuading soft Tories that by voting Lib Dem they can guarantee economic security while saving their conscience.

The source said: “We have to show voters that they will not like the price they have to pay to get economic security if they vote Tory. The price is their school, social care, local government, criminal justice.

“The single most important thing we have to do is to say you can have your economic security and you can have your conscience and public services at the same time. We have to explain the cost of finishing the job in the way Cameron intends.”

So the Lib Dems, who have pledged to balance the budget by 2017-18, like the Tories, also now highlight their economic differences with the Conservatives, a strategy that internally strengthens the hand of the business secretary, Vince Cable.

The best coalition prep is to have lots of seats A source

So the Clegg team says, unlike the Tories, they will oppose plans for £12bn in welfare cuts between 2015-16 and 2017-18. “There is no way you take anything like [that] out of welfare spending without doing huge damage to society, driving lots of people into poverty,” one source said, explaining that the Lib Dems propose a £4bn ceiling on welfare cuts.

The party, unlike the Tories, would allow spending to rise after 2017-18 in line with growth in the economy, and it would not target an overall surplus by the end of the parliament, allowing extra borrowing for capital spending. The Lib Dems are also closer to Labour on how to pay for the consolidation. But Cable, who wants the split between spending cuts and tax increases to be around 50/50, was annoyed when Clegg’s team recently claimed the split would be 75/25. He says the leadership should openly say that the profile for the three years covering 2015-18 is 60/40 and that the figure should be changed again towards a 50/50 split.

There is some internal pressure on Clegg to ensure that the manifesto overall is less bland. It is not just the retiring Orange Book MP Jeremy Browne who attacked the strategy as “deeply conservative and insipid moderation”. A senior MP on the left said: “We need to be much bolder in our manifesto. We should offer to compensate – or at least offer greater help – to the victims of Equitable Life. They were, after all, let down by the state. We have to be distinctive to get heard in a six-party election.”

But Clegg, who was deeply scarred by the U-turn on tuition fees, will be highly cautious about making major spending commitments as he focuses on winning over soft Tories.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Nick Clegg cheerfully rejects suggestions he may not win in his Sheffield Hallam constituency. Photograph: Phil Noble/Reuters

He remains adamant that the Lib Dems are equidistant between Labour and the Tories, saying that he would provide a spine to a Labour government by giving it greater fiscal credibility and a heart to the Tories by protecting key public services.

A coalition negotiating team has been established with two familiar faces from 2010 – Alexander and the education minister David Laws. But there are new faces – the home office minister Lynne Featherstone and the pensions minister Steve Webb – who are to help any coalition deal through the party’s slightly rusty “triple lock” of MPs, the federal executive and a special conference. But the team is not obsessing about post-election deals. “The best coalition prep is to have lots of seats,” one source said.

The party is still hoping the TV debates could rescue Clegg, but it is horrified by the present proposal by broadcasters to stage two debates with seven party leaders, including Plaid Cymru and the SNP, and one between David Cameron and Ed Miliband. Strategists complain that this puts Clegg, who garnered 6.8m votes across Great Britain in 2010 and has a record to defend in government, on a par with the Plaid Cymru leader, Leanne Wood, whose party won 165,000 votes in 2010.

One source said: “It is idiocy. These are the demands of the leader of the Conservative party. The broadcasters are chasing after him, but he has no intention of being in the debate. The mess they have got into was utterly and wholly predictable.”

Amid the doom and gloom, the party hopes that there will be some surprise success stories to buck the trend. It has high hopes that Simon Hughes will hold on in Bermondsey and Old Southwark, a once-safe Labour seat until he won it in a 1983 byelection thanks to a huge personal following. There is talk that the party could win in Oxford West or even unseat the shadow cabinet minister Gloria De Piero in Ashfield. Each seat will be fought to the last.

But one senior figure described the current resigned mood like this: “When you see colleagues, with some you know they will never be coming back. It is a bit like going over the top.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Olly Grender, the former communications chief for the Liberal Democrats and part of the election campaign.

The Lib Dem general election team

• Paddy Ashdown, chair of the election campaign



The loyal former party leader has been summoned back from his new career as a writer of wartime historical books to take overall charge of the election campaign. Ashdown, who was Clegg’s original patron, is revered in the party and will act as a spokesman.

• Olly Grender, deputy chair of the election campaign



A peer and a regular member of the Newsnight political panel, Grender will act as Ashdown’s deputy. Grender knows the party inside-out and has the ability to temper some of Ashdown’s hastier enthusiasms.

• Ryan Coetzee, director of strategy

Coetzee is the brains behind the decision to focus the campaign largely on Tory-facing seats. He is in charge of deployment of resources, targeting of seats and messaging in those seats.

• Danny Alexander, chief secretary to the Treasury



Alexander faces a tough fight to retain his Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey seat. If he holds on, he will take charge of any coalition negotiations.

• Sir Nick Harvey, MP for Devon north

He is in charge of liaising with candidates and the two-way relay of messages from HQ and battleground constituencies.



• Jonny Oates, chief of staff to Nick Clegg



Oates, a cool-headed veteran of the coalition, is the main party negotiator in the election TV debates. He will oversee the overall policy message and take charge of what are being described as post-election contingencies, with a key role in any coalition negotiations.

• Stephen Lotinga, director of communications



A former director of public affairs at the Edelman PR firm, Lotinga has built up a reputation as a calming influence. He will be in charge of the “air war” – the overall national message – which will see him ensure that the “core offer” is put across to voters.

• Lena Pietsch



A focussed and well-humoured aide to Clegg, who used to serve as his communications director, Pietsch will run the deputy prime minister’s election tour, probably the critical element of the campaign. Clegg valued the calm way in which Pietsch managed relations with the Tories in the coalition.

• Hollie Voyce, head of Nick Clegg’s office (political)

Voyce, who made her name running the Lib Dem whips office under the former chief whip Alistair Carmichael, will take charge of managing Clegg during the campaign. Her deep knowledge of the party will help her ease Clegg’s interactions with the party.

• Tim Gordon, the party’s chief executive



Gordon, who oversaw a major restructuring of the party, is in charge of delivering resources, fundraising and logistics. “This need to be seamless,” one source said.

• Hilary Stephenson, the party’s deputy chief executive

Stephenson is in charge of the “ground war”.

Officials working for Clegg in the Cabinet Office will not take up their election roles until parliament is dissolved on 30 March.