SPARE the British voter a thought. For more than a year, there was an undeclared election campaign, with politics higher than usual on the media agenda. Every speech, every phrase, every nuance was analysed for its possible vote winning potential.
Don't talk, cried the people, let us vote and be done with it. Then the Prime Minister, in his wisdom, inflicted on the electorate the longest official campaign in living memory. After 27 mind numbing days, there are still 17 more to go before votes are cast.
Television and radio are running wall to wall coverage. There are nightly party political broadcasts. Newspapers are devoting endless pages to reports and comment. Advertising hoardings are dominated by political posters, many of them with messages so mixed it is difficult to fathom their meaning. So many polls are being concluded, it's a wonder there is a person left walking the streets who hasn't yet been confronted by a stranger with a clipboard asking their voting intentions.
In spite of this media overkill, there are supposedly many thousands of "don't knows" who claim they are uncertain how they will vote - if at all - on May 1st. So the battle goes on for the hearts and minds of the uncommitted and that most important group of all, the floating voters.
But, given the battle so far, what can we expect to happen? Can the Tories catch up from the worst position the party has faced in its history? Will Labour pull off a landslide to match its massive win in 1945?
Perhaps the oddest feature of this election is the near certainty by everybody that Tony Blair's New Labour will win. John Major refuses to accept it, but several leading members of his party are prepared to say so privately. Blair will, therefore, not be seen to have secured success if he merely manages to achieve victory. It is the manner of his winning that counts. Anything less than a 50 seat majority might now be viewed as scraping home.
Currently, most pollsters are predicting a win by over 200 seats. The Daily Telegraph's regular Gallup snapshot on Saturday gave Labour 52 per cent to the Tories 32 with the Liberal Democrats on 11. The Sunday Telegraph, also using Gallup, said the Labour lead had "nosedived" to 16 points.
Blair's closest advisers have privately rejected most poll findings in the past couple of months, arguing that the massive gap is too good to be true. So they tried to convince us they were relieved in mid week when the Times published a MORI poll suggesting the Labour lead had been slashed to a more realistic 15 points. Presumably they will say the same about yesterday's Gallup dive.
These wily spindoctors surely know the importance of perception. The Tories have been heartened by this apparent swing in their favour, and have gone on to the offensive, deciding "to make it personal". They launched a series of attacks on Blair's character and his trustworthiness. He is they charged, stealing our policies, changing his own and "saying different things to different audiences".
For example, businessmen would be told that there was nothing to fear. European policy would not touch them, their taxes would not be increased, and privatisations would continue. Meanwhile, unions were hearing that the EU's Social Chapter would restore lost rights and the minimum wage would make their members happy.
To add to Blair's difficulties was another poor performance in a television interview, this time, under intense questioning from David Dimbleby on Panorama. He is fortunate that millions of viewers evidently switched over to watch BBC2's Antiques Show instead.
Then came an uncomfortable press conference in which Blair faced a number of hostile questioners. It was no surprise that several papers, from the right wing Daily Mail to the liberal Guardian, argued that New Labour was wobbling.
The fact that none of this has apparently impinged on voters' intentions shows how often the media is often misled by its own sense of self importance. It also reveals how desperate journalists are to turn a one horse race into a shock close finish. There is no story if things stay the way they are.
Events conspired against the hacks' hopes. While Blair was suffering from reverses, the old Tory wound on Europe reopened. Dozens of Conservative candidates were found to have produced election material specifically opposed to the party's wait and see policy on the single European currency. These would be Tory MPs, perhaps as many as 150 of them, are telling their constituents that they would rule out monetary union in the lifetime of the next Parliament, or for good.
The other setback for Major was the entrance of the man in the white suit, former BBC foreign correspondent, Martin Bell, to stand as an anti sleaze candidate against Neil Hamilton, the Tory MP accused of taking cash in return for asking parliamentary questions. Both the Labour and Liberal Democrat candidates are stepping aside for Bell.
He made a complete pig's ear at first. Hamilton and his formidable wife, Christine, ambushed Bell's press conference and exposed him on television - Bell's own medium, remember - as a naive, ill prepared bumbler.
It didn't matter. The public obviously didn't worry about Bell's ineffective performance. Several independent polls in the Cheshire constituency suggest that Bell will overturn one of the country's biggest Tory majorities and win.
Here lies the underlying truth of this election. It will take a cataclysmic event, an unforeseeable gaffe of gigantic proportions by Labour, to put John Major back in office. Blair's unremarkable TV appearances, his policy wobbles and the odd rogue poll result are making little difference to people's intentions. The die is cast. But voters have to suffer 17 more days of tiresome propaganda before they can prove it.