Most of all, the play overestimated the strength of the National Front, which reached its zenith in 1977 and went down to a humiliating defeat in the 1979 general election, averaging a meagre 1.3% of the votes in the 303 seats it contested.
We have the most expensive Senate money can buy with contested seats in this past election averaging $50 million each, yet there is little likelihood that the issues that divided the candidates will ever be voted on or even debated.
By the 2005 elections, average income in Liberia was just one-fourth of what it had been in 1987, and just one-sixth of its level in 1979.
In 1988, Senate incumbents up for re-election averaged more than $1 million each from PAC's, an 18percentt increase in two years, and a quarter of their total campaign money.
Since 1960, it has lost six of seven such elections, averaging a vote share below 50percentt.
This graph summarizes thousands of simulated elections, averaging over uncertainty in the estimated state-by-state Obama vote shares, allocating the Electoral College votes for each state via winner-take-all.
Labour has made some headway with the argument that the current coalition will be the first government in recent times to fight an election when average living standards are lower than when it was first elected.
Across the six elections, the average change in the election's outcome was 1.6 points.
On election day, average voters used SMS text messages to urge their friends, family, and colleagues to vote.
In every seat, Labour votes fell compared with the 1997 general election, on average by over half.
