The Scottish Liberal Democrats have a polling problem

The Liberal Democrats achieved remarkable success in the 2024 general election.

Back in 2015 the party had suffered a complete meltdown, plummeting from a vote share of 23 per cent to just eight per cent – one per cent for every MP it returned. Its bloc was so diminished that it didn’t even have the numbers for a football team.

The party still hadn't recovered come 2019.  Its leader Jo Swinson had said she could be the next prime minister and was pictured wearing boxing gloves before being knocked out of parliament instead.

But last year it scored big, building back to a massive 72 seats in what was the biggest Lib Dem standing in a century.

The total included Scottish gains, with another three MPs taking the party’s Caledonian contingent to six.

Putting the party back into third place, the turnaround was so profound that it was like “Christmas in July”, Scottish Lib Dem leader Alex Cole-Hamilton commented. “The Liberal Democrat revival has landed, and it has landed in style,” he said, arguing that voters were reacting to a “profound frustration with a dysfunctional status quo and a desire for a fresh start”.

The hyperbole has diminished in the months since because polling suggests the party will not replicate its performance when Scotland goes to the polls in May.

Polling company Ipsos predicts a nine per cent vote share for Cole-Hamilton’s team in the constituency ballot, and seven per cent on the list.

That count is just fractionally better than its results in 2021, which were so poor that leader Willie Rennie resigned. The Lib Dems managed only 6.9 per cent of the overall constituency vote share, and 5.1 for the list. With just four MSPs, it sat in fifth place for the second parliament running, but with a further diminished presence.

Of course, the Scottish Lib Dems have been in single digits for several election cycles – the last time they made it to 10 or over was in 2011 under Tavish Scott.

But the Westminster success begs the question of why the party’s not cutting through at Holyrood, where its time in coalition government feels like a long time ago indeed – 20 years, in fact.

The truth is that, even then, the party wasn’t electorally dominant. It was Holyrood’s fourth-largest party when it joined forces with Labour to form the first and second Edinburgh-run administrations in 1999 and 2003. And it has never achieved more than a vote share in the mid-teens throughout the devolution era, even at its most popular.

But it has been a party of power and influence nonetheless, and indeed a party of consequence. It is from the Lib Dem ranks that the current member’s bill on assisted dying emerged – a proposal that has focused minds, forced cross-party dialogue and facilitated some of the highest standards of debate in recent years.

And the question of whether the party will again form part of a coalition government remains live.

In an interview with Holyrood, Cole-Hamilton said his party “wouldn’t touch” the SNP and that the Tories had been “in power for too long” at UK level but would be “part of what comes next” in the Scotland, potentially working with Labour outwith a formal coalition.

It’s easier to arrange such a deal when the numbers are in your favour. That requires the Lib Dems to put on seats. And on current forecasting, it’s thought that this won’t happen. The defection of Jamie Greene from the Conservatives increased the party’s ranks to five MSPs, and that’s what’s projected for May.

Which puts the party pretty far away from a UK-style revival – even as rivals are on track for real gains.

Take the Scottish Greens, for instance. Now under new leadership in the shape of Gillian Mackay and Ross Greer, the eco-socialist party could be looking at 17 seats in what would be a record high.

And disruptor Reform could land on the same number, building up from nowhere to become the joint third-largest party in the place.

What are they offering that the Lib Dems is not? Well, neither is trying to come up the middle, with the Greens trying to shift the needle further left and Reform doing the same at the right.

In contrast, the Lib Dems occupies the centre ground, reading to some as too Tory, to others as too Labour. And in effect that means it reads as more of the same.

And if it’s familiarity you want, well, far more of the electorate is familiar with the SNP than its smaller rival.

Those Scottish general election gains were made at the expense of the SNP, which had to fight the contest just weeks after replacing its leader for the second time in 13 months. But with John Swinney’s feet now firmly under the desk, the party’s standing has recovered, even as pressure remains over its public service delivery.

And so the weakness that allowed the Lib Dems to take some advantage no longer exists.

Then there’s Cole-Hamilton himself, a leader who – according to YouGov polling from November – more than six in 10 of the population have no opinion about. They don’t like him, they don’t hate him, because they don’t know him. Of those who did, the findings weren’t good – because while 11 per cent of the overall total had a favourable opinion of the man who listed a hut in his garden on Airbnb, more than double that number – 25 per cent – took the opposite view.

It is of course easier to win votes when people A) know you and B) like you. Entering into his first parliament race as leader, Cole-Hamilton is not in either of those positions. Which puts his side at a considerable disadvantage.

It’s not like he hasn’t had a chance to sort that out, having been in the job for four and a half years. And of course, members didn’t have much of a choice as to who would replace battle-worn Willie Rennie when he stood down in 2021 – because no one else came forward.

At UK level, Ed Davey has taken lessons from pre-ACH-era Scottish Lib Dems to build his brand, adopting the same sort of approach to a press call that saw Rennie frolic at a soft play centre, recline like a Borrower on an oversized deckchair or dress up, Harry Potter-style, and kid-on to fly a broomstick. For Davey, that has looked like a waterski session or leading a brass band. And it has generated a fair bit of attention. Even his Christmas card references the schtick this year. Designed by Scots cartoonist Neil Slorance, whose doodles captured the post-indyref era, it features an angel telling the three shepherds that “yes it’s a stunt, but it’s got a really important message behind it”.

Still, the UK party does not command the media coverage that Reform or the Green Party of England and Wales do, despite its parliamentary advantage. Which doesn’t help Cole-Hamilton build his part of the operation either.

When Greene joined, Cole-Hamilton left the door open for other former Tories. But there has been no repeat and it’s clear that current parliamentarians have been unconvinced by the pitch.

Cole-Hamilton, then, is looking to the list vote to increase his numbers, telling the party’s autumn conference that he will use every opportunity “to appeal for people to back us on that second, peach regional ballot paper”.

The Edinburgh Western MSP also presented his party as one of “realism”.

Based on the current projections, there may well be need for realism in Scottish Lib Dem HQ about what is possible at the election in May.