I’ve been having a look inside the Lib Dem numbers in last week’s election, just to see how big their fall has been.  And its pretty far.  There’s no real analysis of why this happened in this post – I’ll let you make up your own mind on that – its just an overview of the numbers we’re talking about.

Some baseline figures first.  The Lib Dems had 16 seats before the election.  They now have 5.  They held 11 constituency seats in 2007.  That figure is now 2 – Orkney Islands and Shetland Islands.  But its the voting numbers behind that which will give a bit more pause for thought.

On the constituency vote the Lib Dems took 157,714 votes – that is, 7.9% of the vote.  In 2007 they took 326,232 constituency votes or 16.2% of the vote then.  In the intervening four years the Lib Dems have lost 168,518 votes on the constituency vote – down 8.2%.  These numbers are massive.

On the regional vote, the Lib Dems took 103,472 votes – 5.2% of the vote.  In 2007, that figure was 230,671, 11.3% of the vote.  That’s down 127,199 from 2007, a loss of 6.1%.  Those numbers are equally massive.

Add together the reduction of vote on both constituency and regional ballots and the Lib Dems have lost over a quarter of a million votes between the 2 elections – 295,717 to be precise.  Now, granted a lot of them will perhaps have been double-Lib Dem votes, but that’s still a sizeable fall.  A collapse, for want of a better word.

Let’s have a closer look at the Lib Dem vote in a region-by-region breakdown.

Central Scotland:
2007 – 14,628
2011 –  3,318

Glasgow:
2007 – 14,767
2011 – 5,312

Highlands & Islands:
2007 – 37,001
2011 – 21,729

Lothians:
2007 – 36,571
2011 –  15,588

Mid-Scotland & Fife:
2007 – 36,195
2011 –  15,103

North-East Scotland:
2007 – 40,934
2011 –  18,178

South of Scotland:
2007 – 28,084
2011 –  15,096

West of Scotland:
2007 – 22,515
2011 – 9,148

Only in the Highlands & Islands and the South of Scotland did the Lib Dem regional vote not fall by more than 50%.  In Central that figure was 78%.

Its hard to know if the picture is better or bleaker on the constituency vote.  Let’s look at the share of the vote in constituencies held by Lib Dems in 2007 and how far they fell in 2011.

Aberdeen South & North Kincardine:
2007 – 10,843
2011 - 4,994

Aberdeenshire West:
2007 – 14,314
2011 – 8,074

Caithness, Sutherland & Easter Ross:
2007 – 8,981
2011 – 6,385

Dunfermline:
2007 – 9,952
2011 –  5,776

Edinburgh Southern:
2007 – 11,398
2011 – 8,297

Edinburgh Western:
2007 – 13,667
2011 –  9,276

Fife North East:
2007 – 13,307
2011 – 8,427

Midlothian South, Tweeddale & Lauderdale:
2007 – 10,636
2011 –  8,931

Skye, Lochaber & Badenoch:
2007 – 13,501
2011 – 9,742

And the two that the party won:

Orkney Islands:
2007 –  4,113
2011 – 2,912

Shetland Islands:
2007 – 6,531
2011 –  4,462

Sizeable falls in each.  Not to mention the 25 constituencies in which the Lib Dems fell below 5% of the vote, losing their deposit on the way.  That’s £12,500 worth of deposits the party won’t be getting back.  Calling it a bad night for the party is understating it considerably.

I don’t give my colleagues enough credit sometimes – but James saw it coming in this post 5 weeks before the election.  And I was making the case that the Lib Dems hadn’t really said anything about anything other than policing the week before it.

I don’t want this to sound like I’m kicking the Lib Dems when they are down, nor do I take any great pleasure in losing some of their MSPs from Parliament.  I very much liked Margaret Smith and Iain Smith as MSPs, and Jeremy Purvis, “marmite” figure though he occasionally may be (that suit!!!), was a very, very competent finance spokesman.  So I’m sad to see a few of them out of Holyrood.  That said – I don’t think as a party there is anything distinctive there.  There’s no hook for the public to vote for them.  If you are a social democrat, you’ll vote SNP or Labour.  If you are slightly environmental, you vote Green.  If you are kind of centre-right, you vote Tory.   What do the Lib Dems offer?  Are they particularly liberal or democratic?  If they are, I’m not convinced they’ve done a good job convincing anyone of it – and 290,000 fewer votes suggests I’m right about that.

I guess what I’m saying is what James was saying 6 weeks ago.  Sometimes parties lose go away.  Now perhaps that was a little premature – especially since the party are in power at Westminster.  Will’s analysis offers some hope for the Lib Dems in Scotland, so I suppose if you are a Lib Dem and this has depressed you much, that’s where you should head.  But whatever you do – have a good look at the numbers above first.  There’s a big problem for you – how to attract those voters back.  Because without something distinctive, it may take you sometime to see them again.