The Liberal Democrats performed extraordinarily well in yesterday’s by-election, triggered by the resignation of former Conservative MP, Zac Goldsmith in October following the government’s decision to back a third runway at Heathrow.  Liberal Democrat candidate, Sarah Olney, won and the party increased their share of the vote to 49.7% from 19.3%.

This result may come as a surprise to the casual observer.  After all, the party only managed to retain 8 of their 57 parliamentary seats in the 2015 General Election.  Furthermore, the last two weeks have seen them lose several council seats to their Conservative rivals.  So what happened in Richmond?  Did the Liberal Democrats benefit from sheer good fortune?  Or might we be seeing the very beginnings of a Liberal Democrat resurgence?  

A number of factors meant that the Liberal Democrats were able to launch their campaign from a particularly strong position.

Firstly, it is essential to acknowledge that the decision for the UK to leave the EU is likely to have impacted upon the by-election result.  Newly independent, former-Conservative candidate, Zac Goldsmith, is a Eurosceptic and campaigned for a referendum on EU membership.  In contrast, 72% of the Richmond electorate voted for the UK to remain in Europe in the EU referendum.

The Liberal Democrats have been capitalising on this with an unashamedly pro-European candidate who has said that, if elected, she will call for a second referendum. 

Naturally, this raises the question of whether Conservative ‘remain’ voters stayed at home on polling day, thus impacting upon the by election result.  It also resulted in an alliance of the left with the Green Party controversially backing the Liberal Democrat candidate and choosing not to split the vote against former-Conservative candidate, Goldsmith.

Secondly, we can look to the Liberal Democrats’ campaign organisation to explain this electoral success.

The recent Witney by-election provided the Liberal Democrats with the opportunity to practice their campaign organisation.  The party lost many of its staff and arguably, a great deal of its campaign knowledge following its disastrous 2015 General Election result.  They have been gradually rebuilding over the last few months by bringing new campaign staffers on board and have also enjoyed a surge in membership.  Witney provided the opportunity for these people to come together in order to mobilise volunteers, actively campaign and get out the vote in their first high-profile by-election since 2015.  The party was never going to win this safe Conservative seat, but it did increase its share of the vote from 6.8% to 30.2%.

This by-election also meant that the party could learn from their mistakes and perfect their volunteer mobilisation and messaging in a Conservative-facing seat after their electorally damaging coalition.

Historically, Liberal Democrat local level campaign activity has been perceived to be more effective in areas where their main opposition is the Conservative Party.  They have been able to squeeze the Labour vote and encourage Labour supporters to tactically vote Liberal Democrat in order to prevent a Conservative win.  It should be noted that, strictly speaking, Goldsmith is an independent candidate.  Despite this, the local Conservative Association did not run a candidate to oppose him and, when questions, Goldsmith himself did not rule out a future return to the party.  Furthermore, he has received widespread campaign support from Conservative MPs and councillors.

Anecdotal evidence and comments from activists working on this by-election have suggested that the Liberal Democrats have spent a great deal of time encouraging Labour supporters to vote tactically in the hope of preventing a former-Conservative candidate from retaining the seat.  They have distributed targeted literature aimed at Labour supporters and will, undoubtedly, have been targeting these voters with face-to-face or telephone communication to reinforce this message.  The Liberal Democrats claim that a significant proportion of their membership increase has been at the expense of the Labour Party following the re-election of controversial leader, Jeremy Corbyn, thus indicating that the Labour vote may be more susceptible to a squeeze from the Liberal Democrats.  It certainly seems that this was the case in Richmond.

The Liberal Democrats are well-known for their catch-phrase, “Where we work, we win,” which was developed when Lord Rennard was its campaigns chief.  Countless studies have indicated that Liberal Democrat campaign intensity yields dividends.  Local level campaign activity has been shown to pay off for the Liberal Democrats far more than for any other political party.  This brings us to the final point, which is that Liberal Democrat sources claim that hundreds of activists knocked on 20 000 doors last weekend alone and had spoken to 52% of all eligible voters during the course of the campaign.  As a result, it seems logical to conclude that the sheer volume of campaign activity is likely to have contributed to the party’s impressive by-election performance.

So, the question Liberal Democrat activists have been asking all along; does this mean a Liberal Democrat resurgence?  The answer is probably not.  After all, this was Liberal Democrat territory until the 2010 General Election and in 1997 the party held the parliamentary seat with 44.7% of the vote.

We must also remember that the Liberal Democrats tend to perform better in by-elections because they can benefit from the presence of party activists from all over the country.  It’s extremely unlikely that this level of resourcing will be possible outside of a by-election campaign even if the party manages to restrain itself and only target areas where its candidates have a very real chance of winning.  Nonetheless, the local elections in May 2017 will be the real test.

Rebecca Tidy is a PhD student at the University of Exeter. She tweets @Rebecca_Tidy.

Image: Liberal Democrats CC BY-ND 2.0