The video that came through the doors of over 100,000 of Sweden's first-time voters begins with a bedroom scene that managed to blur the line between the romantic and the steamy, before the couple start to talk cosily of their own "first time".
"Greetings from the Social Democrats," the video ends. "Go out and vote on September 20th."
These are desperate measures to get out the vote. But the polls all agree that the disenchanted Swedes are unlikely to come anywhere near their traditional 90 per cent turnout when they go to the polls next Sunday, in what threatens to be the worst performance by the ruling Social Democrats since 1928.
The Prime Minister, Mr Goran Persson, is still likely to remain in office, but is dependent on the voting support of Euro-sceptics. Mr Persson could turn to the old communists, renamed the Left Party, or to an assortment of smaller centrist groups. Either way, these putative partners are suspicious of Europe and firmly opposed to joining the new single currency.
Mr Persson feels aggrieved. After inheriting the country's economic disaster of the early 1990s, when unemployment rose to 13 per cent and overnight interest rates reached an outlandish 500 per cent during the 1992 currency crisis, he has cut the welfare state and restored the economy to health. Inflation has almost disappeared, unemployment is around 7 per cent and the budget is balanced.
And yet, according to the opinion polls, after winning 45 per cent of the vote in 1994, the Social Democrats could sink to 35 per cent on Sunday.
The main conservative group, the Moderate Party, led by the former prime minister, Mr Carl Bildt, seems likely to get little more than the 22 per cent of the vote it secured four years ago. The big gainer is the Left. It got 5 per cent last time and polls now give it 13 to 14 per cent, with the ranks of the old Communists hugely swollen by disgruntled public sector employees and women furious at the social service cuts.
The other success of this campaign has been the Christian Democrats, a peculiarly Swedish group which originated in the Pentecostal Church and campaign on traditional morality and mothers leaving the workforce to care for their children. From 5 per cent last time, polls now give them over 10 per cent.
The wild card in the election is the fate of the Greens, who are at dire risk of falling below the threshold of 4 per cent of the vote required for seats in parliament. If the Greens fail, Mr Persson may be unable to form a majority with just the support of the Left, even if he can overcome his suspicion of what its programme could do to the credibility of the Swedish currency.
Such a Green collapse may well be Mr Bildt's only hope of returning as prime minister, with a coalition of centrists and conservatives, some of whom adamantly oppose Mr Bildt's own programme of a headlong plunge into Europe by joining the euro and eventually joining NATO too.
Sweden's former communists, the Left Party, were told to remove all photographs of Lenin from party office walls yesterday, four days ahead of the general election. The party secretary, Mr Lars Ohly, sent a letter to all districts with the order. "We are a democratic party so I don't think there is any reason to have Lenin on the wall," Mr Ohly told the Swedish television station, TV4.