1. Gender. Many women will not have the heart to vote out Australia's first woman prime minister after barely two months in office, a humiliation of historic proportions and enough to give pause.
2. The Greens. As if the Greens would ever do a preference deal with the Liberals. The Greens' preference agreement with Labor, plus compulsory preferential voting, means a vote for the Greens in an election for the House of Representatives can serve as a protest vote against Labor but still end up as a vote for Labor.
3. Marginal pork barrels. Every government leverages the advantages of office to deliver spending to targeted marginal electorates and the Gillard government is true to form.
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4. Victorian provincialism. Tony Abbott is from Sydney. Gillard is from Melbourne. In Victoria, enough said. The Liberals will lose seats in Victoria, offsetting the anti-Labor mood in NSW.
5. Joe Hockey. There is a limit to how much damage a party can sustain before regenerating. Losing three leaders in two years, then the retirements of Peter Costello and Senator Nick Minchin, who were the de facto leaders of the Liberals, cut into the muscle and bone of the party. If Costello and Minchin were still in place the Liberals' economic credibility would be robust and Labor's leadership stunt would be in serious trouble. Hockey's amiable appearance belies a hardened factional warrior who lacks the gravitas one expects of a federal treasurer. Andrew Robb, yes. Malcolm Turnbull, yes. Peter Costello, in spades. Hockey is lead in Abbott's saddlebags.
6. The pie-eaters. Finally, we get to the most structural and disturbing aspect of the election, the growing primacy of the pie-eaters. As the recent British election showed, when sections of a country become addicted to government spending (Scotland and Wales), the electorate will vote out of self-interest and vote for the party of big government. That is, vote Labor, no matter how bad the record.