Crowding Out

George Osborne offers an alternative suggestion to the perceived wisdom about the role of the debates in the election.  He contends that rather than elevate the Liberal Democrats it shielded the Conservatives from Labour attacks:

"‘We were quite happy with the coverage, thank you very much. Without the coverage of the debates and the process we’d have had days of Labour exploiting the voters’ fears of us.’ George Osborne thought the media interest on process protected his party ‘from weeks of heavy Labour pounding over issues like tax credits’. Labour strategists, aware of this, were frustrated. Osborne had been stung by the success of Labour tactics in the 2001 and 2005 elections when they had exploited voters’ fears of Conservative ‘cuts’."

Essentially, the debates filled the news programmes with days of process rather than policy meat.  Considering the rather bare policy cupboard the Conservatives had it is doubtful whether an aversion to the effect of negative campaigning was the sole motivation.  Lord Ashcroft agrees with Osborne's rating of  the Labour attack machine having been the subject of its attention during the campaign:

"It did prove to me that the Labour Party attack team was much more effective than the Conservative Party defence team."

However, he also provides the deeper reason why such avoidance was necessary in the first place:

"We did not make as much progress as we should have done in transforming the party's brand, and in reassuring former Labour voters that we had changed and were on their side. This in turn gave Labour's scare campaigns about Conservative plans more resonance than they would otherwise have had, and meant that, for many, voting Conservative was a much harder decision than it might have been."

Football, Debates and Polls

A 14 month year old put pay to football and debates this evening. Missing the football turned out to be fortunate (mumbles complaints about general uselessness of Benitez) but got five minutes of the national debate - Cameron seemed to be mimicing Clegg's style from the first debate, Clegg was playing it safe while Brown had even managed to raise his game too.

The pollsters have the second debate much closer than the first with Clegg and Cameron sharing the honours but Labour will take solace in Brown's performance being 'better than expected' (although that was probably from a pretty low expectation base).

Locally Ken Reid has called it for Gerry Adams and Mark Devenport bemoans the lack of polls and worms to help assess impact. The choice of Two Tribes as music was trite. Will the focus on the national debates have engendered more interest in a format which has been more common here for some time?

Keith in Belfast has the post-debate spin from the leaders themselves - Peter Robinson, Reg Empey, Gerry Adams, Margaret Ritchie - although the very close camera angle is a little too close for comfort.

While others debated, dissidents launched a gun and bomb attack on Newtownhamilton police station.

Cameron admits a hung parliament is on

The immediate answer to whether the election debates would have an impact has been answered with the sustainability of the impact now the issue. There were two possible forewarnings that this was possible. First, in previous campaigns the Lib Dem poll rating usually grew during an election campaign as they got more exposure during a campaign, the debates raised the level of exposure to a whole new level. Second, the psephologist John Curtice had highlighted some time ago that shifts from Labour to Tories were soft switchers, while they said they would vote Tory they would not describe themselves as Tory identifiers. This lack of close identification meant they had the potential to switch again. This lack of 'conversion' has also been the core failure of Cameron's period as Tory leader. However while it was possible I doubt if anyone considered it probable.

These dramatic shifts have led to David Cameron admitting that a hung parliament is a real possibility, while of course warning against it. This won't be an necessarily easy sell as other polling shows a lack of public fear of a hung parliament.

The First Leaders Debate

Family duties meant I only saw 45 minutes of the debate. I didn't think it was as boring as some predicted but punting it out as a DVD would be an easy way to lose money. They were all being a bit too nice to one another but I didn't spot any clangers.

A key staffer in John McCain's campaign argued tonight on Radio 4 that it is not the debate that impacts on the polls but rather the perceived wisdom about them which takes a few days to develop. On that score my perception is that Clegg used the opportunity the best of the three of them in terms of handling the debate and getting a message out there. Cameron and Brown I had about even, both seemed that little bit more rehearsed.

UPDATE according to the polls the wisdom of the crowd is 1.Clegg 2. Cameron 3.Brown.