No one wants to fight a national campaign. This will be the least general election in years

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[/audioplayer]There’s normally an easy way to tell which party is losing a general election campaign. Whenever one side starts telling you to ignore the national polls and look at what is happening in certain key seats, it is a sure sign that they are in deep trouble. In this election, however, all the parties are arguing that what’s going on in their target seats matters more than the national polls. No one is keener to dispute the relevance of the national polls than the Liberal Democrats. To demonstrate that they’ll still matter after the next election — particularly if there is another hung parliament — they’ve taken to sharing details of their own internal polling. The polls they’re sharing suggest that their vote is holding up far better in their own constituencies than it is nationally, where it is down to a single-figure percentage. If correct, the party’s research also indicates that the local popularity of their MPs should help them to hang on to more seats than expected — perhaps 30 or so. But the Liberal Democrats are not alone in their efforts to focus attentions beyond the national polls. Members of the Labour shadow cabinet are quick to say that things are looking better in the English marginals than they dared hope, and that performance in these seats might compensate for their troubles in Scotland. Meanwhile, the Tories are keen to make sure we’re all keeping an eye on ‘the invisible campaign’, a strategy under which David Cameron made 26 regional visits last week. These stops might not have made the national news but they received plenty of local attention. The Tories hope that will help sway voters in their chosen locations. Indeed, the Conservatives have cunningly used the launch of their — or rather the government’s — long-term economic plan for each region to get acres of positive local coverage.