Has this election campaign bored everyone?

BBC - Has this election bored everyone?
Yahoo - Britain's boring election reaches gripping finale?

I think the big politicians have been dull, incredibly dull. Half out of fear of actually meeting the public and half out of misguided "political strategy". I am not sure Clegg, Miliband, Cameron have "won over" many new supporters to the parties they lead. They don't appear to have got stuck in. Way too much centralised media strategy and grid planning. They should just have got out there in the real world and said hello to us - the natives they want to rule over. The second line big names like Osborne and Balls have been more of a hindrance than a help. People really just don't like them.

The smaller politicians have got very stuck in and it has been covered locally but not come across nationally except for the leadership debate where Plaid, SNP, UKIP and The Greens all got the fame treatment. Where there are local council elections they have tried very hard too. I think maybe the parties are now lacking in volunteers to get out and about, changing times.

For prospective MP's I suppose it's been awful. The manifestos are not great sales pitches for the big three parties' candidates. Some interesting ideas and views expressed poorly leaving more questions than answers. But the main issue is that they are in a real scrap. There will be near record numbers of new MP's. Many more seats are being properly contested, for example - every seat in Scotland! Triangulation and safe seats are diminishing if still dominant.

On the policy front there are quite large differences on fiscal and monetary policy issues i.e. tax and spending stuff. There are big differences surrounding the renewal of Trident and in other areas too.
It seems to me that these policy differences are bigger than we have had for a while and yet we still seem to feel that overall the big three at least are still "broadly the same". The leadership is of the same kind of Westminster village background and would end up going in the same kind of direction on health, education, transport, military, housing, EU and immigration. Within the general direction of travel they do differ but overall appear to be heading the same way.

So perhaps the politicians haven't grabbed people's attention and despite sometimes starkly different policy choices we feel the big three are going the same way. What about the TV and radio debates, polling and the "unknown"?

For political anoraks and those politically engaged I think the debates have been overall a positive thing. The Question Time with Cameron, Clegg and Miliband in Leeds was great. The audience gave them a fairly hard time. I actually watched the whole programme and didn't struggle too much. It's a different way of going about it. Very presidential and none constituency based but it's the future. National staged events with door to door local issues is the format we have currently settled on. The constituency bit will be further weakened when we move away from first past the post at Westminster.

Polling has been on an almost USA kind of epic scale. The billionaire Lord Ashcroft has helped fund a pile of it, but generally there has been more so we have read more about it in the press and heard more about it on the radio and TV. Indeed politicians have used polling and evening betting odds in their literature like never before. Will this affect the way we vote, will it help us in our tactical voting, will it skew the way we vote. Who knows, it's a brave new world but it has for me been an interesting part of the GE campaign.

Finally the unknown. By that I mean the fact we may, just may be entering a new era of multiparty politics on a UK scale. We have it already in the Welsh Assembly, Northern Irish Assembly, Scottish Partliament and European Parliament and now it seems it may finally reach Westminster on a meaningful scale.

That's the exciting bit for me and why overall I have to admit if the campaign has been long and dull it's getting interesting now because we just don't know how it's all going to pan out. Will the SNP become a one party state in Scotland and hold the balance of power at Westminster? Will UKIP nick a few seats and come second in 100 more? If so is that setting them up for truly large gains at the next GE? Will the Greens, Plaid and UKIP take enough votes, if not seats, to cause upset in places e.g. People voting UKIP not Tory and hence Labour winning the seat type of thing? How big will tactical voting be? Can it be measured? How many people will postal vote? Will the new system prove more secure than the old?

What will the new landscape be and what will it mean? Another coalition? Confidence and supply? Lots of big MP's losing their seats? Another GE in the next year? Chaos in Westminster? Calm in Westminster? The beginning or end of SNP dominance? The beginning or end of UKIP? The end of the UK as we know it? What bargaining and bartering will be done, will it show manifestos to be merely negotiation tools rather than a kind of intended governing document? Etc etc.

So for me the big politicians have been fenced off and isolated and only been seen in the admittedly mildly interesting if exasperating big TV set piece events. Their grip on reality has to be more questioned than ever before. The policy side of it could have been interesting but has been drowned out by the daily grid and the set piece events. The TV and radio events have dominated and some have taken note.

The saving grace for me has been the polling conundrum which is for anoraks only. More broadly the fact that the politicians appear so far out of touch with the public that it's causing ripples and no one really has a clue what might happen as a result.

We shall know soon enough. Roll on Thursday night.