Nick Clegg is thinking about the ‘market’ who’ll vote Lib Dem in 2015

Normally, a party that was down in the polls and on course to lose around a third of its parliamentary seats would be in a grim mood, with the leader under pressure. But we don’t live in normal times; we live in coalition times. So, the Liberal Democrats have just had a remarkably chipper conference thanks to their belief that there’ll be another hung parliament. This, they calculate, will ensure that they get another five years in government. Nick Clegg’s speech today — and its confidence — was predicated on this assumption.

There is a danger for the Liberal Democrats that the public rebel against the idea that a party that loses seats and votes and comes third should carry on in government. But the Liberal Democrats calculate that the quarter of the electorate that might actually vote for them, their ‘market’, wants to hear about coalitions, and which deals they might strike.