But one idea doing the rounds is that some on the right might try to install Boris Johnson as Tory leader before a second election in October.
Meanwhile the Conservatives' target lead for an absolute majority is, at 11 points, just as high as it was before.Little wonder, then, that Mr Cameron decided not to bet on a second election, as Harold Wilson did in 1974.
In a warning to the main political parties, which are making tentative plans for a second election as opinion polls suggest that Labour and the Tories are largely tied, Clarke said: "You can get out of a hung parliament by having a second election but, not surprisingly, the public tends to return a parliament which looks rather like the first one," he said.
If the Conservatives or Labour try to govern as a minority party without the Lib Dems, would this really generate such chaos as to make a second election inevitable?
As Kenneth Clarke pointed out, a second election would almost definitely conclude with a direct repeat of the first result.
There are increasingly strong signs, fuelled by the problem of deals with the SNP, that both the Conservatives and Labour are thinking in terms of minority government, even though it is now much harder, because of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, to call a second election as Labour's Harold Wilson did in 1966 and 1974.
If she fails to win a majority, that could call into question her position as Conservative leader and might mean a second election in Britain this year.
First, its newly elected leader Diane James quit within days of being elected, citing a lack of support within the party; immediately, the vacuum she left sucked in a greased-up and grinning Nigel Farage who was forced to return as leader while a second leadership election takes place.
He cannot make a choice that pleases everyone and, if a hung parliament leads to a quick second election (as it did in 1974), his party may be squeezed as voters throw their weight behind one of the other parties for the sake of stable government.
As Russia ambles toward a second presidential election almost surreal in its absence of sturm, drang or even garden-variety suspense, perhaps its most amazing aspect is that nobody yet has a clear notion of what the front-runner in the race -- if it can be called a race -- would actually do if elected.
Both cities proved to be corrupt as the second election drew near.
