Never loved Elvis

This piece of entertaining lunacy from the Labour campaign is amusing, if nothing else. I reckon Gordon Brown may actually have a good sense of humour... it's just that he doesn't allow anyone to see it. He did at least manage the only laugh of the second debate, with a quip that Clegg and Cameron reminded him of his two kids squabbling at bathtime.

The highlighted comment on the 'Elvis rally' is interesting:

A morale-booster for the activists, but with some senior Labour figures feeling the party is trapped in the ghetto of its own core vote, perhaps this type of event might have been intended to appeal to floating voters.

I think the point is that Labour has retreated to a strategy of maximising the core vote in its heartland seats - Scotland, Wales, the North of England, some bits of London - and leaving the Lib Dems to fare the best they can with the progressive vote in the rest of England. The floating voters have been given up as a bad job.

My calculations with the BBC election calculator (easier to use than the Guardian one - recommended) show that if Labour goes any lower than its 1983 share of 28% (which is certainly possible) it's most likely going to get less seats than the Tories, but it's going to be pretty difficult for the Tories to get an overall majority unless they start polling in the high 30s rather than the low 30s again.

Which could happen, but I don't see how Cameron's current strategy of playing to Daily Mail readers' most base prejudices is gonna help. You've already got the nutters in the bag, pal. Could we perhaps see the Tory rhetoric shift more to the centre over the next week in a bid to hoover up some of those (L)iberals? Or are they, like Labour, desperate to shore up the core vote and avoid leakage to UKIP/BNP (which I do believe is more of a factor than the polls are letting on?)

It's really getting fascinating now.