SO WHAT is going on, then? Is this election really close, down to a few hundred votes in several dozen marginal seats, as Tony Blair has claimed — or is it a cakewalk, a blowout, another Labour landslide, as at least some of the national polls are indicating?

Should the eager citizen anticipate a lengthy election night, armed with an ancient sleeping bag and trusted flask of tea, or could they be tucked up in bed by midnight and so spare themselves the spectacle of Peter Snow’s ever more mind-bending computer graphics? For years, mankind has asked: “Is there life in outer space?” The question of the hour is: “Is there life in this contest?”

The most honest answer would be that which Mr Spock offered regularly to Captain Kirk in Star Trek: “It’s life Jim, but not as we know it.”

For all the millions of pounds that have been poured into endless mailshots, numerous telephone calls and even a little old-fashioned knocking on doors in the perhaps 100 of 646 seats that will matter the most on polling day, any political party operative who claims to know what is actually happening is either lying, spinning or suffering from a chronic affliction of selfdelusion.

There are three factors that truly matter in “marginal Britain”. The first is that, while it is in everyone’s interest to insist that it is “close”, it probably is quite tight, anyway. It is fairly obvious why Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats have engaged in a conspiracy to insist that the outcome of the poll is balanced on a knife edge.

Labour is desperate to avoid complacency among in its own supporters and is painfully aware that its fate depends on turnout, more than on any other factor. It has to convince many lethargic sympathisers that, if they do not vote, then, first, Michael Howard will enter Downing Street and secondly, the end of the world will follow approximately 72 hours later.

The Conservatives, meanwhile, fear fatalism among their adherents. It is a depressing experience for typical Tory stalwarts to hear and read, day after day, that their team is lagging behind in opinion surveys. When even Mr Howard speaks of being “2-0 down at half-time”, it is hardly the inspiring message of Shakespeare’s Henry V at Agincourt, let’s face it.

So the Tories must insist, have to believe, that in the struggle that counts, they are doing far better than expectations. The same is true for the Liberal Democrats, who need to counter the argument that a vote for them nationally is a wasted one by demonstrating that in certain constituencies it is a ballot cast for one of the other two parties, which is about as much use as seeking to pay the supermarket bill with fifteen shillings.

What makes these claims more legitimate is the character of the British electoral system. Our system is a cross between blind man’s buff and Russian roulette. The number of votes a party secures has only a modest relationship to the tally of seats that it will acquire in the House of Commons. British democracy is not unlike another, seemingly entirely different, activity in life: it is not the size of your cross (on the ballot paper) that matters, it is where you put it.

The present national polls illustrate this perfectly. The latest Times/ITV News tracker survey suggests that Labour retains a nine-point lead (although this is expected to narrow as the impact of a rough few days for the Prime Minister feeds through to the numbers). In theory, this is exactly the same margin as Mr Blair obtained in 2001, so his parliamentary majority should be similar. But as the old song asserts, It Ain’t Necessarily So.

There is some evidence that Labour is obtaining support from those who did not vote last time (predominantly among working-class electors who often already live in safe Labour seats) but losing it from others (notably in the lower middle class) who did participate on election day four years ago.

This is not an ideal combination. It could mean, at the extreme, that Mr Blair’s vote in his Sedgefield seat rises by 6,000 but three Labour candidates in marginal territories find their backing slips back by 2,000 votes each. The net result could be the loss of those three politically critical constituencies.

The final piece of a jigsaw which, frustratingly, will not fit together is that there is no such thing as “the marginals” as a set any longer. Seats with virtually identical Labour majorities will produce different results on May 5, depending on whether it is the Tories or the Liberal Democrats who are in second place, where in the country they are located and the personal qualities of the former MP, if one is seeking re-election. It would not surprise me, for instance, if Labour held Dorset South (majority: 153) and lost Islington South (majority: 7,280).

So what is going on then? Is it close or a cakewalk? The perhaps disturbing truth is that your guess is as good as Messrs Blair, Howard, and Kennedy.

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