In Gordon, the Lib-Dems hope that Tory and Labour voters will rally behind their candidate to beat Salmond ... the only problem is the numbers don't add up

But in a room full of farmers at the National Farmers Union of Scotland hustings in Oldmeldrum, if there are tactical voters they're being tight-lipped about it. Some haven't made their mind up yet, but many just aren't telling. A few tell me that they are Conservative voters; one that he proposed Salmond's nomination as candidate. Among those on the panel is Christine Jardine, the candidate who hopes to gain most from a tactical vote. She tells me: "There's a hangover here from the referendum because people here voted so overwhelmingly No; and the SNP so blatantly haven't given up on another referendum." It's also, she points out, a constituency where voters face a "clear and stark choice" between "the two parties most likely to hold the balance of power", the SNP or the Liberal Democrats.

As with many hustings, the panel at the NFUS evening seems to divide like this: the SNP against the rest, with most of the the candidates vying to point out how the Scottish Government had failed farmers. Salmond, however, smiles gently, through it all. Does he, I ask later, perhaps, revel in that attention? "That's Robert Burns for you," he said. "The mair they talk the better I'm kent."

We are talking in Salmond's office manager's car. I get the feeling that the former First Minister's days are more improvised than meticulously planned. We were meant to meet earlier in the day but he got caught up in a publicity shoot with The Sun who asked him to pretend to be Yoda to their Nicola Sturgeon Princess Leia. Hence, we find ourselves doing the interview on a dark, late-night drive through Gordon, cramped in the back seat of this small vehicle. The piles of copies of The Dream Shall Never Die and campaign leaflets, have been shifted out, enabling us to squeeze in. The on-the-hoof improvisation is almost charming. What is striking is the lack of stage-management, the fact that Salmond's schedule seemed devised almost according to whim. Even as Sturgeon's campaign looks increasingly presidential, his looks more quirky and personal. There, for instance, is Sturgeon, in her Saltire 1-style helicopter, and Salmond in this tiny car, or in his Snappy Bus, the van he is "deploying" for his final week.

On the way north to his home in Strichen and "Mrs Salmond", he gets the urge to stop off at the Ythanview pub in Methlick, where, instead of his generally preferred closer of a half of cider, he opts for a Brewdog, a beer he finds "eminently drinkable". On entering, he shakes the hand of almost every person in the pub, most of whom greet him like an old friend of the family. "I wouldn't say the support for me was overwhelming," he says, reviewing the hustings we just left. But, he notes, "that would be the first hustings that we wouldn't have comprehensively won if they'd been polled afterwards."

Naturally, the possibility of another independence referendum was raised in Oldmeldrum, as in most hustings. "I get asked it interminably," he says, "and I give the Nicola answer: that it's a matter for the people." In the street, however, he notes, that he is more often asked the same question by Yes voters who would like it soon. "What this election is consumed by is the thought that Scotland is going to have a say. That's what's consuming it, this sense of opportunity."

Meanwhile, Salmond tells me he doesn't believe the tactical vote is happening. Conservative-voters are not switching sides. "If you take these Tory farmers who are here tonight, they're not tactical voters. They're pretty dyed in the wool."

Salmond seems thrilled by the polls that have put the SNP as heading towards landslide victory in Scotland, and even possibly winning all the seats. In The Dream Shall Never Die he has written of how, in the run up to the referendum, when the the poll emerged saying that Yes was ahead, he said it was "too early" and that there would be a counter reaction. Is he, I asked, similarly concerned about the recent poll suggesting the SNP could sweep the board and win all 59 seats? "No," he said. "Because the counter-reaction in the referendum was based on a perception of risk. Where's the risk now? Do people think as Theresa May has suggested that it's the biggest crisis since the abdication? No."

Nevertheless, the extent of the support still seems to be surprising even him. He recalls how, earlier in the day, on his way back from Edinburgh, he took a detour into his childhood home town of Linlithgow to "pick up Mrs Salmond's order from the healthfood shop". He was struck by the fact that not only were the people running the shop SNP supporters, but also "the folk who came in were voting SNP, the guy from the TNT van was, and then the four guys from the council lorry outside were too."

The truth is that Salmond has rarely felt the slap-down of losing in an actual election. The only election he has ever lost was in the 1970s when he stood for student presidency of St Andrews University. That's not to say he hasn't known what it's like to fight against the odds. The first time Salmond wooed Gordon for a seat at Holyrood was an all together different story. Behind in the polls at the start, he finally won it with a majority of a mere 2000 votes. Four years later he had a majority of 14,000. "You only get that through people judging you on what you've done," he says. "You don't win a seat in the few weeks of the campaign."

From the moment he announced he was standing for this election, in Liberal Democrat Malcolm Bruce's former seat, the bookies had him odds on to win. Salmond hasn't, as he has often been wont to do, checked the odds recently or made any fresh bets. "The odds," he says, "are too cramped." He is, he says, rarely accosted in the streets by people who are angry at Salmond. "But, the Liberal candidate is angry," he says. "She's the angriest person in the constituency."

Christine Jardine is, indeed, passionate in her challenging of Salmond. The former BBC journalist was nominated as Liberal Democrat candidate a full year before Salmond was announced for the SNP. It didn't come as a great shock, though, she says, as "there had already been a lot of speculation." She recalls the relief of the end of that speculation, and adds, "I relished the challenge because Alex Salmond stands for everything that I don't like in Scottish politics. I disagree vehemently with the Scottish nationalists. I was quite pleased that it would be him. I want to win obviously, and if I have to beat Alex Salmond to do it then that's fine... but the important thing to me is standing up for the people of Gordon."

Jardine is from a working class background, the first person in her family to go to university. Both parents, she notes, were Conservatives, but her dad's family "were in at the start of the Labour party in Glasgow". It was when she came to the North East in 1985, and found there Nicol Stephen and Malcolm Bruce and others who would later become Liberal Democrats, and saw that "they were putting into practice the things that I intuitively believed", that her politics were shaped.

On the day I meet Jardine, Nick Clegg's wife Miriam Gonzalez-Durantez has come to Bridge of Don to support her and do a talk about inspiring women in business. She puts in a plug for Jardine."For me there couldn't be any clearer contest," says Gonzalez-Durantez. "Christine is the kind of woman who will not only work hard to try to get your vote, but will also work when she is your constituency representative." Salmond, by contrast, she describes as: "All about winning an election for himself and his own ego."

Jardine believes she is seeing a growing tactical vote. She also argues that the findings of their own research were always different from that early Ashcroft poll. "We noticed we were getting a lot of people on the doors volunteering the fact that they were going to vote tactically. They would tell us that they're lifelong Conservatives and yet they're going to vote for us. But also we would get people who were members of the Labour party who are going to vote for us."

The former broadcaster has two key message: one is that she will listen; the other is the big Liberal Democrat promise of stability. Part of this message of stability is also, clearly, that she is the Unionist choice.

However, in the constituency it is striking the number of people who say that though they voted No in the referendum, they are now voting SNP. The question of why voters are choosing to do so, is also, it turns out, what a small team from the pro-Union Scottish Research Society are here to answer. The answer they say that they are hearing is that people believe the SNP will deliver a better deal for Scotland in the UK.

As Salmond himself points out: "If you look at the arithmetic then quite clearly the SNP support is not confined to the 45% who voted yes in the referendum. You can't get 54% in an opinion poll from that 45%. Clearly the SNP have reached beyond the referendum dividing line." In Gordon, in other words, as elsewhere, this is not another referendum in disguise. Something else is going on. And it isn't necessarily tactics.