Inside Politics:The alternative coalition appears to have the momentum as we hit the final straight, but it would be foolish to write off FF, writes Stephen Collins.
With the television debates out of the way, the election campaign at national level is coming to a close after three weeks of hard campaigning amid claim and counter-claim.
However, at constituency level frenetic activity will continue right up to polling day, and the outcome of those 43 battles will ultimately decide the shape of the next government.
The alternative alliance of Fine Gael and Labour has had a good national campaign over the past three weeks, and appears to have harnessed a mood for change.
However, capitalising on that trend and translating it into the seat gains required to win office will still be a tall order.
For Fianna Fáil the problem is the reverse. The party has been on the back foot for much of the campaign but, as the strongest and most successful political organisation in the history of the State, it is better equipped than any other party to survive on an ebbing tide. There are a number of constituencies where Fianna Fáil could endure a significant vote loss but hold on to its seats.
If there is a strong countrywide swing then the party will simply lose seats regardless of the strength of individual TDs. The electoral massacre of Fine Gael TDs, some of them national figures, in the last election proved that if the tide is big enough it will carry all before it.
However, if it is a smaller, more uneven one, then a strong rearguard action at constituency level by Fianna Fáil could save up to 10 seats that might otherwise be lost. That will ultimately be the difference between holding or losing power.
Fianna Fáil strategists were adamant yesterday that the Taoiseach had easily won the television debate with Enda Kenny, despite widely differing views among political pundits.
"There can be no doubt that the Taoiseach's systematic dismantling of Enda Kenny's uncosted and flawed contract will make a real impact on this election," said Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern in a statement summing up the mood in party election headquarters.
At Fine Gael headquarters they were equally confident that Kenny had come out on top, particularly in the first half of the debate, and that the subsequent focus of attention on health was playing right into their hands.
The bottom line is that the Fine Gael leader's overriding objective was to avoid taking a heavy punch. He did that while looking and sounding well for most of the debate.
"As far as we were concerned it was like going into the last five minutes of a hurling match with a two point lead. There is always the fear of the other side getting a goal, but that didn't happen," said one Fine Gael figure.
"After the debate we are still two points up and there are only three minutes left now."
Mary Harney probably summed it up best, saying that both the Taoiseach and the alternative taoiseach had shown strengths in the debate and the partisans of each would be happy. Speaking as a Government colleague of Ahern, she felt he had shaded it with his greater experience coming through.
The Taoiseach's performance certainly lifted morale in the Fianna Fáil camp and put real fight into the party going into the final straight.
It also gave Fianna Fáil ammunition to have a real go at the Fine Gael and Labour commitments on health and crime, and to question the basis of their figures about hospital beds and extra gardaí.
On television the figures debate was tedious but it is capable of becoming a real issue in the final days of the campaign if Fianna Fáil can convince the voters that the commitments being made by the alternative alliance are pie in the sky that cannot be delivered.
The contest between the main party leaders was a much duller affair than the four-way debate the previous night. The sparks flew in that joust, particularly between Michael McDowell and Gerry Adams, in which the PD leader landed two hammer blows on the Sinn Féin leader. Adams created the opportunity for them by leading with his chin.
It was a reminder of the crucially important, and generally overlooked, role that the Tánaiste played in bringing about the settlement in the North by insisting that republican criminality would have to end once and for all.
British prime minister Tony Blair was quite content to allow republican crime rackets to continue as the price of a deal with Sinn Féin in 2005. If McDowell had not stood up to him and made the issue a deal- breaker, criminality would have continued on a nod and wink basis.
McDowell's role in holding the line for democratic standards against republicans and a supine British government, that was willing to turn a blind eye to IRA crime in Ireland, was vitally important even if it is something for which he has got little credit.
His performance in the debate was a reminder to the voters of Dublin South East of how important he is to national politics.
McDowell, paradoxically, by forcing the republican leadership to honour the spirit as well as the letter of the Belfast Agreement almost eight years after it was signed, actually helped them cross the Rubicon and begin full engagement in normal politics.
Sinn Féin's involvement in powersharing in the North, and its potential gains in Thursday's election in the Republic, flow from the belated abandonment by republicans of all paramilitary and criminal activity.
In the debate McDowell was fighting not only for his party's survival but for his own seat. His task was not to appeal to more than half of the electorate but to make a pitch for a niche vote for his party and himself.
Getting enough votes in the face of a swing to Fine Gael was always going to be difficult. The experience of the PDs in the past four elections in winning six, 10, four and then eight seats on almost exactly the same percentage of the first preference vote shows just how difficult it is going to be.
The good days for the PDs came when Fine Gael was doing badly, while the bad days happened in the opposite circumstances.
Adams, the main target of McDowell's forceful contribution, looked at sea on occasion during the debate. He relied on repeating a number of broad political points, focusing on the party's commitment to rights-based governance. He won't have lost any votes by his performance, but he did nothing to sway uncommitted voters either.
Green Party leader Trevor Sargent was terrier-like in his attacks on McDowell, but whether that was enough to reverse the downward trend in his party's support since the election was called was unclear. McDowell is the whipping boy of a large section of the electorate and the media so Sargent may have gained some support as a result of his performance.
Pat Rabbitte was probably the most consistently fluent of all four leaders and he stood aloof from the sniping going on between the other three. The more presidential style suited the image he was attempting to convey of a politician who is on the verge of being involved in a partnership arrangement in government. Attempts by the PD leader to portray him as a left-wing ideologue failed as the argument about taxation and the economy developed.
All of the six party leaders have everything to play for in the last days of the campaign. Unlike 2002, the outcome is still open.
The momentum appears to be with the alternative government but to win it will need good vote management and good luck, as well as a much higher share of the vote than it obtained last time out.
Fianna Fáil will fight doggedly to the end no matter what the clutch of polls due this weekend suggest. The party is used to winning, almost by right, and it would be foolish to write it off until the last vote is counted.