Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, might be about to surprise us all.
For months most people have thought that he'll cling on to power until the last possible moment and only go to the country when he has to. So that points firmly towards early May being the polling date.
So why might he go earlier? Let's outline the case.
Firstly the big interview he did last week.
Here the father who famously dismissed using his children to help him politically by annoucing "they're people not props" told us about the loss of his baby daughter, his son's ongoing illness and how he rather clumsily proposed to his wife.
This was about giving Gordon a human face. To try to get people to like the man who drives the policy.
Labour have also launched their election slogan.
It's the rather tortuous “A future fair for all”, but it's a sign the party is to borrow a more successful election chant; "Fired up and ready to go".
Then there's the financial crisis.
Things are improving. Britain's out of recession, unemployment's down, a pile of senior economists (what is the collective noun for economists anyway? A disagreement?) have rallied being the Labour idea of continued investment in the economy rather than launching in to a series of vicious public spending cuts.
To delay risks things going horribly wrong in the weeks before polling.
Alistair Darling, the finance minister, has to present his budget in March. If an election is called then, he can simply present a financial statement and leave the troublesome question of tax hikes or spending cuts to the manifesto and after the election.
Cabinet ministers never reveal the date of the election. "That is solely a decision for the prime minister" they say. Except now a senior figure has let it "leak" that it'll be May 6th, with a slip on a big politics show. Sure he did.
There's also the Iraq inquiry to consider.
Gordon Brown is due to give evidence at the end of February, or now more likely the beginning of March.
But if an election is called, he could reasonably claim his evidence could influence the outcome and so should be delayed until after the poll.
For the opposition Conservative Party to win a majority, they need by this stage to have a lead in the opinion polls of at least 10-12 per cent. The latest one gives them a lead of six.
So a hung parliament is possible, and that is one reason why the ruling Labour Party has been cosying up to the third party, the Liberal Democrats, the potential king makers.
Finally, elections in the UK are not on fixed dates.
They have to happen during the five-year life of the parliament and are called by the prime minister. It's an advantage. In an election year not a huge advantage, but still an advantage.
And Gordon Brown bottled it once before. If he'd gone in the summer of 2007 he would have won. But he dithered and it cost him. He's a bright man and won't be so stupid again.
And that's why Britain might be going into an election sooner rather than later. And the result? That's for another day.
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