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In 2010 nearly 1 in 4 people voted for the Lib Dems. They won 57 seats. Now they are polling at 7-8 per cent. How many seats will they lose if they have lost seven in ten of their voters?

Cambridge is one of the places where that question will be answered. The Lib Dem MP, Julian Huppert, won here in 2010 by nearly 7,000 votes, polling 39 per cent, but Labour, who only won a quarter of the vote, now threaten him.

Lord Ashcroft’s poll of the constituency, released eight weeks ago, put Labour up 1 per cent, 33 to 32. There has effectively been a seven point Lib-to-Lab swing. But that is far less than the national polls imply. The two prediction models we use on May2015 (uniform swing, and a second, more sophisticated measure) suggest Labour should be ahead here by 5-7 per cent.

The fact that the seat is still competitive is a credit to Huppert, and reflects a trend we will see on election night: relatively popular local Lib Dem MPs will buck their party’s national collapse.

As Ashcroft’s poll showed, Cambridge is only a race when voters are asked about Huppert. Labour lead by double-digits in a theoretical national election, but not when voters are asked about “your own parliamentary constituency…and the candidates who are likely to stand”. That is the real race – there are 650 individual elections on 7 May, not one national election.

Which voters are changing their mind when asked about local candidates? Is Huppert being helped by erstwhile Tory and Labour supporters, or is he simply retaining more of the 2010 Lib Dem vote than his party is nationally?

The margin of error when we ask these questions using one poll is high – more than 7 per cent. But the numbers offer some evidence of Huppert’s local popularity, or possibly tactical voting. When asked about an abstract national election, only 2-3 per cent of 2010 Tory and Labour voters offer support for the Lib Dems. But when asked about Huppert, 17 and 12 per cent do.

Labour voters may be slightly more inclined to back him because he is, as a former President of the Cambridge Union suggested to May2015, one of the more “left-wing Lib Dem MPs”. Huppert opposed tuition fees, as he quickly points out when we interview him.

“I was a student here when Labour, who promised to never introduce tuition fees, introduced them,” he tells me in the party’s constituency office – a small office space tucked off a dual carriageway. “They’ve been very clear that if they had won the last election they would have increased fees.”

As for Tory voters, the spike in their support may be tactical; their candidate, Chamali Fernando, is unlikely to win more than the 25 per cent the party managed in 2010, and keeping MPs like Huppert in Cambridge could keep Labour out of Downing Street.

But the real battle here is for the 2010 Lib Dem vote, of which students – who make up nearly 30 per cent of the seat – are a key part. As one Labour campaigner put it to me, he knew Anne Campbell, the previous Labour MP, had lost in 2005 when he saw the queues of students stretching outside polling stations.

On election night relatively popular local Lib Dem MPs will buck their party’s national collapse.

Now Labour are hopeful students will back them. There are too few 18-24 year olds in Ashcroft’s poll to judge, but an encouraged Daniel Zeichner, Labour’s candidate, tells me the university Labour club recruited 350 people last month.

A former councilor standing in a seat for the fourth time, Zeichner speaks easily and stands tall. Politically, he epitomises many local Labour candidates. “The only thing David Cameron is good at doing is lying,” he tells me.

“What, it’s too many nurses at Addenbrooke that crashed the economy? I’m happy to have that conversation,” he retorts, when I suggest half the country still blames Labour for the coalition’s spending cuts.

He’s refreshingly direct. How do you counter the sleaze stories that disaffected Ukippers often bring up to smear the political class? Offer them “good ones – there are so many to tell”.

So what would Labour do? Scrap the bedroom tax, guarantee a 7-day cancer test, ensure half of new homes go to first-time buyers, and introduce an £8 living wage, he fires back.

He sounds more convincing than his party’s leadership, as we sit sipping tea in the squashed interior of Pickwick’s Sandwich Bar to the south-west of the city. But neither he nor Dave Baigent – a laughably fit former fireman who took a doctorate, taught for a decade and became a Labour councilor last year at 69 – are discouraged by Ed Miliband.

All Labour’s ire here is reserved for the Lib Dems.

“Most convincing Labour leader I’ve ever met,” Baigent assures me later, in the back of Zeichner’s car after an afternoon of canvassing. Zeichner rubbishes the media criticism of his speech – “I thought it was inspiring” – as they take me on a tour of Cambridge’s wards.

To an outsider the city is dominated by its university, but they point me to Marshall airfield, provider of 2,000 blue collar jobs, and runway for Bill Gates when he needs to reach “Silicon Fen”, the city’s overshadowed hub of high-tech firms. Apparently the Lib Dems tried to close it.

All their ire is reserved for the party. We pass Cherry Hinton – traditional “Tory-Labour territory”, filled with “electricians and small businessman” – but Cameron is a secondary enemy here.

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Cambridge is a liberal pocket in a sea of Conservative shire seats.

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We drive through thin streets filled with non-descript terraced houses. Baigent tells me they have doubled in value in five years. “Most of the people who live here, their children can’t afford to.”

It’s a “fair criticism” Labour didn’t do enough on housing, Zeichner concedes. Now the city faces more pressure with the expansion of Astrazeneca. The firm is creating 2,000 jobs here, but that may mean 2,000 new families. Without more homes Cambridge faces the same spiral as London: graduates want to work here but can scarcely afford to. The city is surrounded by the green belt – its expansion can only extend so far.

Someone is delivering paper copies of the Guardian. Only in Cambridge, Zeichner chuckles. This remains one of the most affluent and liberal areas in England. While Ukip’s chief economic spokesman, Patrick O’Flynn, is standing here, 73 per cent of voters told Ashcroft they would never for the party.

Someone is delivering paper copies of the Guardian. Only in Cambridge, Zeichner chuckles.

Cambridge has poorer pockets, especially in the north of the constituency, but two-thirds of voters here are “ABC1s” – the upper end of Britain’s social scale. The average quality of work here is among the highest in the country. And this was the place the Economist recently offered as the model for Britain and alternative to new Ukip havens like Clacton.

“Residents are turned off by anti-immigration rhetoric,” the ‘paper’ intoned. Labour certainly aren’t pandering to those fearful of it. Baigent is adamant: “Immigrants saved this country.” My tour finishes on Mill Road, now home to every stripe of curry house and takeaway. I long “got rid of my freezer”, Baigent quips.

On our way back into town Zeichner is eagerly greeted by a young taxi driver, one of around 7,000 Bangladeshis who now live here. Rahima Ahammed, whose bid for a local council seat Zeichner and Baigent spent the afternoon supporting, tells me her father was one of the first Bangladeshis to arrive here, in 1952. He left his village and spent decades as a foreman at Sheffield steelworks.

But immigration hasn’t created opposition to it. Across Britain Ukip are faring best in places with the fewest immigrants. Cities like Cambridge are small scale versions of London, where the party is winning over few voters.

Its not an argument of which students need to be persuaded. Their pivotal role is complicated by uncertainty over how many of them will actually vote in Cambridge. But they lean left. Nigel Farage was due to speak here last month before pulling out, reportedly in fear of protests; every talk by a Tory minister at the Union has been picketed, one of its officers tells me.

Huppert: “I wouldn’t have chosen our first time in government to be with the Conservatives.”

The question is whether Huppert can win over the left when his party has spent four years propping up the right. He concedes coalition has been “very difficult”. “I wouldn’t have chosen our first time in government to be with the Conservatives.”

But, he continues, “It would have been much easier for us…to just say ‘Oh we don’t like that, oh that’s very bad’, but then we wouldn’t have been able to… lift poorly-paid people out of income tax, increase state pensions, double renewables or see same sex marriage”. Without the Lib Dems, Cambridge and the country would have had to endure “untrammelled Tories”.

It’s unclear whether voters will reward these claims of responsibility. They haven’t nationally, but Huppert is hoping his independent stance and record as a local MP will be enough. He also has a highly effective ground team. While Zeichner is the candidate I meet on the doorsteps, the Lib Dems are the party who have reached more voters so far, according to Ashcroft’s numbers.

If Labour can win here, where they lost by nearly 15 per cent in 2010, there could be few seats left where the Lib Dems still challenge them. This battle is not just about an extra win on election night, but the future of the Lib Dems as a threat to Labour.