So what went wrong for Nick?

[longfingernailspaintedblue]

I am utterly depressed at the fact that we might be stuck with Gordon Brown.

But one cheery thought. What the hell happened to Nick Clegg?

The Lib Dems lost seats all over the place. They have less than last time, and about the same vote share.

No-one is happy this morning. The Conservatives should have done better. Labour are out.

But the Lib Dems? Surely they were meant to be surging? At the very least, surely they should have kept their own seats??

I think there was too much of a rush after the first TV debate, too much made of it, people making predictions all over the place without any real substance. In the end I think he showed the Lib Dems up to be abit amatuer and this isn't the time to be taking risks with an amatuer government.

It was the same with David Steele. Lib Dems look like viable contenders, high in the polls...'go back to your constituencies and prepare for government' etc. But when it comes to the crunch, it never seems to turn into votes. They got a bigger % of the vote this year but nothing like what the polls suggested... should have come second if that had been true.

I think the 'vote Clegg, get Brown' message was a factor. And I think the Labour party asking people to tactically vote LD to keep the Tories out just cemented that impression.

Two things went wrong for Clegg, the electorate or some of them , did not like his stance on the euro, or immigration, with his talk of an amnesty. I feel he could have faired a lot better, but these two areas held him back.

The "vote Clegg get Brown" message and Daily Mail stirring up "vote Clegg and get Greece-style fires in the streets" can't have helped.

Plus the Lib Dems still got 23% of the popular vote - that's not exactly a failure! It's the bloody weird first past the post system that only translates 23% of votes into a tiny minority of 50-odd seats.

I am utterly depressed that the dreadful Cameron might get in now. Tory / LibDem coalition is a horrendous balls-up of an idea.

The problem is that - decades and decades on - still nobody REALLY knows what the LDs stand for. Are they centre Left - as their policies would suggest? Or are they proper Liberals, in the traditional sense of the world?

Clegg is a flake and the electorate saw through it. If they cannot win with this amount of hype and media support, they are unlikely to do so any time soon.

As far as I could see, voting Lib-Dem was a vote for uncertainty. It was completely not clear who they would go into alliance with after the GE.

Also, I suspect lots of people thought that voting for the Lib-Dems was a wasted vote with no chance of winning a majority in each individual consistuency.

I suspect that as usual people reverted to what they know. Fear of the unknown pure and simple.