Her in-built constituency, name recognition and ability to command wall-to-wall media attention mean that her decision can, and will, come late in the year.Plenty of other Republicans are contemplating a run.
In a focus group conducted for the Guardian by BritainThinks in the constituency, name recognition of MacKinlay was low – as a result, evidence emerged of a shift towards Ukip among male voters wavering between it and the Tories.
In a large country, where each state is a single electoral constituency, name recognition is crucial.Marco Antonio Villa, a social scientist at the Federal University of São Carlos, sees a new type of colonel in people like Mr Gomes, a slick soft-left operator who is likely to run for president again in 2010.
One of Wilson's closest supporters, furthermore, was a wealthy garment manufacturer, based in his constituency, named Joseph Kagan.
"He should have known better," says Crispin. "The clue's in his constituency's name.
Going back to Obama, I first unknowingly joined the trail for that victory in 2000 when sociologist Paul H. Ray and psychologist Sherry Ruth Anderson published their findings on a new constituency they named the "cultural creatives".
She's kind of a middler, strong on early childhood care and women's rights, less so with minority constituencies than her name and background might suggest.
Her mentor, Fay Gillis Wells, wrote 117 invitations; 99 pilots responded; and the Ninety-Nines had a constituency and a name.
No matter how many marginal constituencies the Chancellor names, as he did today in what can only be considered blatant electioneering, there is nothing he can do to reverse the past five years' Coalition policies.
And although there will continue to be military action against terrorist forces, counter-terrorism is primarily a matter of winning hearts and minds, or at least not alienating the natural constituency in whose name the terrorists claim to act.
