Certainly, the Lib Dems are in a weak position to demand a more proportional electoral model from Mr Cameron after this result.

ECONOMIST: Election results

If the coalition works, voters may warm to the idea of power-sharing, and to the proportional voting systems that inevitably give rise to it. (A referendum on the alternative-vote electoral model, which the Lib Dems prefer over Westminster's first-past-the-post system, is part of the deal.) And the Lib Dems got all this despite flopping at the polls.

ECONOMIST: The new coalition government