The electorate that lines up at Canberra's polling booths on Saturday will be a lot less fractious, and less fractured, than the one that punished Labor four years ago, forcing it into minority government into power.
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That's the picture that emerges from The Canberra Times's exclusive Patterson poll.
There are no seismic changes predicted, no angry mob of voters waiting for election day so they can tear down the government, according to pollster Keith Patterson.
In his recent surveys Mr Patterson was struck by the lack of, and the lack of support for, small parties and independents, which he noted as a feature of the 2008 campaign when he carried out the corresponding polling four years ago.
The array of single-issue campaigners, small parties, one-man bands and plain old crackpots who contested the 2008 poll told a tale of discontent with the Jon Stanhope majority government. The election result reflected the voters' desire to hurt Labor.
But Mr Patterson says he is not getting that feeling now.
He was also struck by the lead Katy Gallagher had established over her challenger Zed Seselja as preferred Chief Minister.
Ms Gallagher's two-to-one lead over Mr Seselja, closer to three-to-one in her electorate of Molonglo, is unassailable with three days to go.
The Liberals' TV ad (''I like Katy Gallagher, but …'') shows strongly that they know it too and believe they need to get the message out to voters that liking the Chief Minister doesn't mean they must vote for her.
But was it too little too late?
For four years, Mr Seselja's party has done everything it could to take the shine off Ms Gallagher's reputation with the voters, only to find now, on the cusp of the election, she is stronger than ever.
Today's result must cast considerable doubt on the strategy and tactics employed by the opposition for the past four years, long before Ms Gallagher took the top job, both to make the Liberals leader more popular and to make Ms Gallagher less so.
Mr Patterson's observation that ACT people ''appear to be quite happy with the history of the Labor minority government with the Greens support and they seem to be perfectly happy to follow it up with another dose of it'', will be a bitter pill for the Canberra Liberals to swallow.
It shows that in the past four years they have failed to create the sense of crisis necessary to topple a government and failed to establish themselves a credible alternative.
The collapse in Mr Seselja's approval for the top job, down from 40 per cent in 2008 to just 26 per cent yesterday, suggests that in their attempts to tear down Ms Gallagher, the Liberals may have hurt their own chances badly.
