I think this definitely can happen. The Liberal Democrats in the UK (third party, colloquially the Lib Dems) gained support in the 2010 election by pledging not to vote for increases in tuition fees for UK universities. They were able to form a coalition government with the Conservative party after the 2015 election. The Lib Dems hadn’t been in power before (though their predecessor, the Liberal party, hadn’t been in power since the 1920s).
The coalition government increased tuition fees by a factor of 3. There were widespread protests at universities, mostly peaceful though one bloke did lob a fire extinguisher off a roof. The Liberal Democrats never recovered, going from 57 seats to 8 at the next election in 2015. I was a member of the party around 2017, and many people I spoke to said “I used to vote for them but then they increased tuition fees”.
This doesn’t prove a causal link (people might have just been annoyed at the coalition government’s austerity policies, and used tuition fees as a totem of that) but people do literally say “I liked Nick Clegg but he betrayed his position on tuition fees and I’ll never vote Lib Dem again.”
I think this definitely can happen. The Liberal Democrats in the UK (third party, colloquially the Lib Dems) gained support in the 2010 election by pledging not to vote for increases in tuition fees for UK universities. They were able to form a coalition government with the Conservative party after the 2015 election. The Lib Dems hadn’t been in power before (though their predecessor, the Liberal party, hadn’t been in power since the 1920s).
The coalition government increased tuition fees by a factor of 3. There were widespread protests at universities, mostly peaceful though one bloke did lob a fire extinguisher off a roof. The Liberal Democrats never recovered, going from 57 seats to 8 at the next election in 2015. I was a member of the party around 2017, and many people I spoke to said “I used to vote for them but then they increased tuition fees”.
This doesn’t prove a causal link (people might have just been annoyed at the coalition government’s austerity policies, and used tuition fees as a totem of that) but people do literally say “I liked Nick Clegg but he betrayed his position on tuition fees and I’ll never vote Lib Dem again.”