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Campaign analysis: Wednesday April 20
Daniel Forman's daily diary of the election campaign.
Wednesday April 20, 12:10pm
The half way point has been reached; 15 days have elapsed since the prime minister went to the Palace and 15 more remain until polling day.
If it were a football season this would be the hard slog over the winter months where titles are won and lost. It may feel like they are going through the motions, but whichever party can gain momentum now will have a definite advantage.
To mix two more sporting analogies, the battle is on to go into the home straight in pole position.
There is no doubt that Labour holds the lead at the moment according to all the polls, although to a varying degree.
However the party looked rather left out of the main debate today as both of its rivals looked at local government issues whereas Labour stuck to its family policies theme.
Part of the problem is that, as with pensions, Labour has little to say about council tax now, having kicked the issue into the long grass after the election by instituting an independent review.
The Liberal Democrats on the other hand are hoping their detailed plan to introduce a local income tax is as popular as their "axe the council tax" call.
The Tories had a rare and genuine campaign surprise today, unveiling plans to scrap council tax revaluation for the duration of the next parliament.
This could be a vote winner if the Conservatives can convince the electorate that the Welsh example of tax rises is about to be transported over the Severn Bridge.
However it also slightly too technocratic and late in the day to have much of an impact. It wasn't even mentioned in the Tories' manifesto last week.
But it does give Michael Howard something else to talk about other than crime and immigration. While he mentions health, education and the economy, his problem is that every time he does so Labour support goes up as these are the government's best cards.
The worry for the Conservatives is that they have genuinely done quite well so far, despite suffering from the revival of the Blair-Brown duopoly.
If this is where they stand in polls on the back of a good performance, what hope has Howard got?
In truth his diary gives the game away. The Opposition leader rarely visits the kind of seats needed to win the election outright. Rather he is focussing on taking back enough constituencies to show progress and respectability.
With the Lib Dems snapping at their heels, the Tories are in as much of a relegation fight as a title race.
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