My friend X, who works for the Labor Party on the numbers side of things, posited something interesting last night: that the Coalition’s anti-union advertising is targeted not at swinging voters, but the Liberal and National Parties’ blue and rusty-brown ribbon bases.

Apparently swinging voters (in particular young swinging voters, who have never experienced a militantly unionised workplace) aren’t really troubled by unions; but the traditional Liberal voters (in places like, say, Mosman or Woollahra) are. Twelve-page leaflets on how Labor would ruin the economy are being distributed in places like Epping, one of the leafier suburbs in John Howard’s electorate of Bennelong.

So it may not be a strategy to win, so much as one to avoid annihilation.

We’ll see on Saturday, I guess.