jennifereccles The main reason the Liberals failed to make progress, apart from some daft policies and a leader who failed to make much impression, was that the main battle was between two extremist parties, eached lead by a man with an appalling reputation for probity and who were each loathed by a large proportion of the electorate to an extent we have not met for a long time in British politics.
This meant that where the main fight in a constituency was between Labour and Conservative, most voters had one party and leader they would do anything to keep out, so they were not going to risk voting for any third party.
Move from those constituencies, to ones like mine and several other similar ones I know, where the Labour candidate, didn't stand a hope in hell of winning , here the Lib Dem vote increased by nearly 20% at the expense of the Conservatives.