I'm not surprised. The Lib Dems really let down their voters

A lot of their Scottish seats are quite safe tho, even from labour and the Tories.

You sure about that? The current polling shows that Danny Alexander, Michael Moore and possibly even Menzies Campbell could all lose their seats. The problem for them is that almost all Lib Dem voters from Scotland/Wales/northern England voted for them because they thought they were to the LEFT of Labour, so are clearly going to abandon them now they're bringing in cuts which will affect them. Lib Dem voters in the south are more to the right and so may well approve of what the government is doing, but it's hard to see why those people won't just vote Tory in the future.

The problem for the Lib Dems is that they idiotically fell into Cameron's trap. In most European coalitions, the junior partner gets near-full control of certain departments so that they have a distinctive identity in the government - and so, likewise, I expected that in this coalition, Clegg might have been made Home Secretary and another Lib Dem made Education Secretary with Lib Dems filling out both the entire departments, meaning they could've got all the credit for whatever reforms happened in education and civil liberties, immigration etc, meaning the party could've taken a small but distinctive list of their achievements in government into the next election. But instead, Lib Dems have just been given ceremonial roles in all departments while making them junior to Tory ministers (Cable and Alexander are obviously junior to Osborne on the economy), which means Cameron has dipped the Lib Dems' fingers in blood in ALL of the government's policies, while leaving them none which are completely their own and which they can take all the credit for.The crucial thing is that, if the government is popular then the Tories will take all the rewards at the next election, but if the government is unpopular, both the Tories AND the Lib Dems will be hammered. Eitherway, it's a no-win situation for the Lib Dems, and that's why I expect them to pull out of the Coalition after next year's AV referendum.

This.

You can say the coalition was "their only option" (even though it wasn't) all you want, but the fact is people who vote Liberal clearly aren't going to agree with the majority of Tory views. They are sellouts who will not be receiving my vote again in future.

What other options were there? The only two party combinations which would have got a majority were Con/Lab (unlikely although it has happened in many councils) or Con/Lib Dem. The Libe Dems could have refused to do a deal with anyone but that would probably have led to another election very soon. The party doesn't have the money to fight another election.

There are many parts of the budget which I don't like at all. I would have preferred it if Clegg had tried to hold out for the so-called mansion tax rather than an increase in VAT. Maybe he did but Cameron is well aware that Clegg would be reluctant to carry out a threat to quit the coalition. The Tories have the likes of Michael Ashcroft to pay for another election. The Lib Dems don't.

Also, the Lib Dems have been campaigning for many years for a change to the electoral system which would mean coalition governments became the norm. It would have been hard to explain to the electorate why they had refused to play a part in the only feasible coalition after May's election. That would simply have given strength to the argument that any system other than first past the post is inherently unstable.

That said, the party does need to ensure that they have a number of policies which they can say only happened because of their input. Simply saying that some things (e.g. cuts in inheritance tax) didn't happen won't be enough.

There's a long way to go to the next General Election. Could be 4 years 9 months still. Anything can happen in that time and polls now mean nothing.

Although I would've loved a Lib-Lab coalition, which I think would've combined the best from both parties (Labour's economic policies, the Lib Dems' civil liberties policies), I do accept that it wasn't feasible because of the way the arithmetic worked out and because Labour backbench MPs were so hostile towards it. But, even so, the Lib Dems still didn't have to go into coalition with the Tories - they could've easily agreed a confidence-and-supply agreement with a minority Tory government. I actually think they would've been in a stronger position that way, because the Tories would probably have been cowed into not doing anything too radical out of fear of the Lib Dems bringing them down at any time.

Although I would've loved a Lib-Lab coalition, which I think would've combined the best from both parties (Labour's economic policies, the Lib Dems' civil liberties policies), I do accept that it wasn't feasible because of the way the arithmetic worked out and because Labour backbench MPs were so hostile towards it. But, even so, the Lib Dems still didn't have to go into coalition with the Tories - they could've easily agreed a confidence-and-supply agreement with a minority Tory government. I actually think they would've been in a stronger position that way, because the Tories would probably have been cowed into not doing anything too radical out of fear of the Lib Dems bringing them down at any time.