THE Liberal Democrats had a mixed night, gaining votes and seats from Labour but losing them to the Conservatives. Overall, the outcome at the end of the night looked like being a disappointment for Charles Kennedy in view of the rising expectations of the past few days that the party would make gains across the board.

Although the party’s share of the vote was well up, to the highest level since 1983, its gains in seats looked likely to be less than the victories by the Tories. (in terms of MPs, though of share of the vote).

The Lib Dems have been the main beneficiaries of the unpopularity of the Blair Government, but the pattern has not been straightforward. The Lib Dems have apparently been helped by the disaffection of former Labour voters because of the Iraq war.

While the final polls seem to have pretty accurate in terms of the share of voters won by the main parties, projections of seats on the usual convention of uniform national swings have broken down. There were big variations between different types of seat and different parts of the country. The Lib Dems were involved in two wholly different types of contest: against Labour in the North and in big cities, and against the Conservatives in rural and southern England.

As the early results came in from safe Labour seats in northern England, the Lib Dems picked up most of the Labour defectors, while a minority have gone to the British National Party. But the Lib Dems lost out in its hope of gaining Newcastle Central, although they were on course to win a number of seats in Scotland, where boundaries have been changed.

The Lib Dems’ biggest early scalp was capturing Hornsey & Wood Green, in suburban North London. This seat was held by the Tories in the 1980s, before being won by Barbara Roche for Labour in 1992.

The Lib Dems were doing less well, however, where they were directly up against the Conservatives. Their main early loss was Newbury, where the ban on fox-hunting may have boosted the Tory cnadidate.

And the Lib Dem share of the vote fell sharply in some of the seats they were defending, such as Torbay. In northwest England, however, the Lib Dems held on in Cheadle, one of their most marginal seats, underlining the big regional variations.

The Lib Dems were also doing well in areas with large number of students, such as Cardiff Central.

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