Oh dear. Not only have the Liberal Democrats only won eight seats so far compared to the 56 taken in 2010, many candidates face losing their deposit.
If a candidate fails to win five per cent of the vote in their desired constituency then they are subject to a £500 fine. Unfortunately the Liberal Democrats have had many candidates do exactly that. So much so that the Twitter account LibDem Deposits has been set up just to keep a tally of their fines:
Going to be honest, we didn't think we'd be *quite* this busy tonight.
The account is now reporting that the current total of fines is an enormous £157,000. This would mean that out of the 631 Liberal Democrat candidates that ran 314 failed to get five per cent of the vote:
In the 2010 election the party did not lose any deposits.
Update: The number of Lib Dems who need to return their deposit has increased to a whopping 335. That means the total bill for the party is £167,500. Given that the party received £234,000 in the first month of the campaign, they are at least breaking even.
Thank God for the Guardian website. Without it I would never have known that I have been marching through a killer heatwave. For the past couple of weeks I have been quite happily carrying a 15 kilo rucksack over Alpine passes, walking the GR 5 trail which leads from Lake Geneva to the Mediterranean. So,
Steerpike
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