It has been an election buildup dominated by the rise of Reform UK and the Greens, and the contrasting woes of Labour and the Tories. But there is a chance that on 8 May the Liberal Democrats, largely ignored in recent weeks, could wake up as the biggest party in English local government.

This is just one of several paradoxes for the party’s leader, Ed Davey, and his team. They are fifth in many national polls, with a rating barely changed from 2024. But Lib Dem bosses are sanguine, convinced that UK politics is now so different, so atomised, to make headline polling almost irrelevant.

One senior Lib Dem said: “A lot of people seem to be misreading the way things are going. We think we have some of the answers.”

In one sense, the ambitions are familiar. Barring an unexpected change of fortunes, the Lib Dems will increase their total number of councillors for an unprecedented eighth set of local elections in a row.

A particularly good night for the party, plus heavy losses for the Conservatives, could result in the Lib Dems overtaking Kemi Badenoch’s party. If Labour fared very badly, there is an outside chance this second place could become first.

One party strategist said: “It’s not something we’re necessarily expecting this time – it’s more likely in a year or two. But for all the fuss about Reform, year after year we are quietly making gains. It’s the tortoise and the hare.”

Beyond the raw metrics there will be two main gauges of success for the Lib Dems. The first is consolidation or progress in “blue wall” areas where they took dozens of parliamentary seats from the Conservatives in 2024. “In places like Surrey we want to show we can finish the job on the Tories,” as one Lib Dem MP put it.

“I call it electoral bamboo,” another MP said. “I’m still surrounded by Conservatives, but we are spreading out quickly.”

The other gauge, which feels less certain, would be gains on councils which, in recent years, have been less promising ground for the Lib Dems, such as Birmingham and Preston.

It is the latter category where Lib Dem strategists hope to test out a campaigning model based on a mixture of rigorous voter targeting and being able to, as one planner put it, “cut through the noise” of an increasingly fragmented political system.

For the local elections, this is based around occasionally Reform-adjacent retail policies, such as a demand to cut fuel duty by 10p to help with costs from the Iran war, coupled with relentless attacks on Nigel Farage, particularly his closeness to Donald Trump.

The party is now running its biggest-ever programme of digital adverts, most targeting Farage, contrasting his support for Trump with Davey’s repeated willingness to criticise the US president.

“Iran has had real cut-through,” one Lib Dem MP said. “It’s not uncommon to have someone complain about potholes and then switch directly to the war and their worries about Trump.

“It is also really notable the number of doors you knock on where people say they are desperate for anyone except Reform to win. Farage is really polarising.”

This phenomenon is central to a strategy aimed mainly at the next general election but getting an initial try-out on 7 May. Based on huge amounts of internal polling, the Lib Dems are working on the basis that about half of voters will do whatever is necessary to block Reform in their local area.

One senior Lib Dem said: “We are seeing huge, huge, levels of tactical voting, in a way we haven’t seen before.” It is this context that makes the party relaxed about polling about who will definitely vote for them, and to focus more on those who would consider it, perhaps tactically.

With about a quarter of voters seen as strongly pro-Reform – the “burn everything down and start again” sector, as one Lib Dem official put it – another quarter are frustrated with the government and flatlining incomes, but uncertain where to go.

This is where campaigning is aimed, based on a mixture of retail policies centred on the cost of living and presenting the Lib Dems, particularly Davey, as able to understand their worries but without the baggage or discord that comes with Reform.

One senior Lib Dem said: “We don’t need to chase the 50% who are already anti-Reform. They will vote tactically regardless of almost anything else. In 2019 we tried to win just with these people and got hammered. It’s easy to boost polling numbers and lose seats.”

This will, however, at most be a partial test. Local elections are not general elections: turnout is lower, and many voters are less worried about a Reform-run council collecting their bins than the idea of Farage in Downing Street.

But there will be lessons to uncover, including whether the Lib Dems’ electoral ground game still works in a five-party battle, and if Davey, whose performance has prompted some grumblings among MPs, has the ambition and charisma to expand the party’s brand outside its strongholds.

Thus far, the mood feels hopeful. “There is more work to do, but we are getting towards being on the right track,” one MP said. “Some of the movement on economy is positive.”

But with the two-party system seemingly smashed and voter loyalty a memory, all predications come with caveats. This is new ground for everyone.

“I knocked on a door and a man said he wanted to vote for Restore Britain,” one MP said, referring to the Rupert Lowe-led start-up party that sits even further to the right than Reform. “When I told him they aren’t standing here he said: ‘Well, it’s probably you then.’ That was a first.”