The strangely strong performance of Liberal Democrats in Scotland

Yes, you read that right.

No, I didn’t put a horrible typo in the headline.

Given the Liberal Democrats lost all but one of their seats in Scotland, and even in that one seat it was rather close in what used to be a rock-solid safe seat, I was expecting to see unremitting carnage when looking at vote share changes.

But here’s the odd thing: the four seats with the best (i.e. least worst) change in the Liberal Democrat vote share in Britain were four seats in Scotland, all of which we’d won in 2010.

Jo Swinson (-2.4%), Mike Crockart (-2.8%), Christine Jardine (-3.3%, standing to succeed Malcolm Bruce) and Alan Reid (-3.7%) got the four smallest falls in the Lib Dem vote anywhere, and as it didn’t go up in any seat that makes them, on this measure, the four best performers.

Alas, none of them won. But they and their teams deserve particular congratulations for their efforts. It wasn’t enough but it was a darn good effort.

P.S. I predict some mocking tweets from people who read my tweet of the headline but not the post itself…

Hat-tip for the data file: Iwan Stanno.