Election 2004:

I'm lying on my back in the living room doing my nightly stretch routine. It's peaceful in the dark. I'm enjoying the moment.

Then Ingrid starts yelling at the TV.

It seems that the ACT Liberals have kept their advertising budget in check and are now blowing a fair wad of it by buying big during the breaks for Australian Idol. Which is a smart play. Plenty of people across many socio-economic groups are watching and it is a good way to catch them and promote your message in short bites. Federal and ACT Labor have done the same thing and bought spots too. Commonsense TV advertising.

However the Liberals have maybe gone a bit far. They haven't bought one spot a commercial break though, they are buying back to back spots which means up to four Liberal spots in a row are happening.

Election TV advertising is an art and a science. Part gut instinct and part careful dissection. But there are a few common sense rules to it. And rule number one is don't annoy the swinging voter, because if you annoy them they ain't gonna vote for you.

The ACT Liberals have obviously forgotten rule number one and probably cost themselves a couple of thousand votes in the both the local and federal elections within an hour.

The ACT Liberals have also undignified themselves in another aspect of election TV advertising - The Negative Ad. Going negative in an advertising campaign, pointing out the opposition's flaws (real or imagined), and to my mind is the last wave of the hand before the head slips under the water never to surface again. Pointing out how shit the other guy is means that you have decided that you don't have better policies, don't have a better candidate and don't have a smowball's chance in hell of winning the election. But you might just convince some people that the other guy is so crap they may vote for you instead. As a strategy I hate it but it certainly worked for the Federal Liberals in 1996.

But this is the asbestos infused final wheeze of the campaign and Political operatives far more knowledgeable than me will tell you that the in the last week of the campaign the undecided many are not looking for someone to vote for, but are looking for someone to vote against.

Maybe the Liberals will piss off enough people to see Labor scrape in, but I doubt it. I'm saying the federal Liberal government will return with a loss in majority of four to five seats. But what would I know?

Maybe I should watch CSI on Wednesday night and see who has the most ads.