When votes were finally totted up, the largest opposition party, the liberal Democratic Alliance, had won barely 12%.
According to ICM polls for the National Union of Teachers, the big shift against the Conservatives came in 1987 when 46% of teachers said they would support the Liberal Democrat Alliance, with 28% supporting Labour and 24% the Conservatives.
At the latest general election, in 2009, it got 66% of the vote (down from 70% the time before) against only 17% for the biggest opposition party, the liberal Democratic Alliance (DA), still seen by most blacks as an essentially white-led organisation.
When in 1987 they defected, disillusioned by low spending on schools, they turned first to the Liberal-SDP Alliance, the third party, before coming round to the charms of Tony Blair.
Focusing on early 20th-century Britain, he describes in scholarly detail different strategies for harmonising faith and knowledge: the sought-after alliance between liberal theologians in the Church of England and religious-minded scientists, and the rather different efforts of science-minded writers such as Julian Huxley and George Bernard Shaw to foster a modern, non-Christian religion.
Two of its business-oriented parties, the Progressive Alliance and the Liberal Party, have merged to improve their chances.
But eventually the issue is expected to make the Social Democratic Party abandon its shaky alliance with the Liberal Democrats.
Victor Ponta became Romania's third prime minister in less than six months when his left-wing-dominated Social Liberal Union (USL) alliance took charge in May 2012.
The Conservatives say that Mr Blair is doing this in order to make a permanent alliance with the Liberal Democrats and lock the Tories out of power for ever.
He has the makings of a competent economic team, thanks to an election alliance with the small Liberal party, led by Stefanos Manos, a former economy minister.
In attitude, the Awami League is perceived as being more pro-Indian, liberal and secular than the opposition alliance, which includes Islamic groups and is, at least in its rhetoric, virulently anti-Indian.
ECONOMIST: The troubled country does not want an early election
Two months later, Mr Harper came close to being toppled by an alliance of the opposition Liberal and New Democrat parties over his handling of the economic crisis, but avoided a no-confidence vote by suspending parliament for a month.
Three Liberal Democrat peers rebelled, including Lord Alliance, Lord Carlile of Berriew and Baroness Tonge.
This week the neo-liberal (and confusingly named) Civic Democratic Alliance, the most junior partner in the ruling coalition, started to disintegrate.
Hiatt is a member of the Democracy Alliance, a group of wealthy liberal donors led by Rob McKay, an heir to the Taco Bell fortune.
Alliance is a sister party of the Liberal Democrats but Mr Lyttle said their MP, Naomi Long, sat on the opposition benches.
The leadership of the Socialist Workers' Party which is, to a large degree, the same as the leadership of the Stop the War Coalition has tried to help along an alliance with Muslims by retreating from its liberal position on women's and gay rights.
The leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, Vlad Filat, said the election was a victory for truth and that it would definitely seek to form a coalition with other opposition parties - the Liberal Party, the Democratic Party and Our Moldova Alliance.
But he failed after the Liberal-National opposition and the Australian Greens formed an unholy alliance to reject it in parliament.
ECONOMIST: The prime minister stakes her future on a divisive scheme
The Liberal Democrats came to this conference fearing that Clegg's alliance with David Cameron could doom them to electoral disaster.
That is, in the name of its support for its water-downed definition of democracy, the US facilitated Erdogan's subversion of all the Turkish institutions that enabled liberal norms to be maintained and kept Turkey in the Western alliance.
Chavez is not just antagonistic to prosperous market oriented capitalism and liberal democracy but towards everything that Uribe stands for, especially his strong alliance with the United States and his backing of Plan Colombia.
Based on the Solidarity trade union, which toppled communism, it is an alliance of two dozen or so parties, some of which have liberal economic notions.
The outgoing coalition failed to back the government in the confidence vote after several Liberal Democrat members, including its vice president, resigned and joined the opposition alliance.
Before the 1981 Liberal-SDP merger, Cyril Smith admitted that he had initially wanted to strangle the Alliance at birth, but had later come to accept it.
But Mr Abe, who heads a Liberal Democratic Party administration, has spoken out about the need to prioritise the Japan-US alliance amid a changing regional dynamic.
Sir Graham represents south-west England and Gibraltar in the European Parliament and is also president of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party, which consists of more than 50 liberal parties from across Europe.
BBC: Lib Dem MEP Graham Watson reprimanded by party over tweet
His alliance with the Centre (which lost ground) and the right-wing (in economics) Liberal parties (which gained) looks weak and only gives a coalition led by Mr Bondevik a bare quarter of the votes in parliament, less than Labour on its own.
Nor was Kim Dae Jung able to convince the PM to merge his United Liberal Democratic Party (ULDP) with the president's proposed new party, or even remain in their current alliance through the end of his five-year term.
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