Overall none of the seven did themselves harm

As a general rule you have to wait a few days before you can draw firm conclusions about the impact of high profile event like TV debates. We had four instant polls and four different winners. I’ve yet to study the detail but it was odd that the bookies’ favourite firm, YouGov, produced a different polling outcome from the others. Having had a spread bet of Sturgeon with SPIN that was no bad thing for me.

William Hill linked to ComRes and apparently settled their final who won market by ignoring the percentages and going for the final numbers in the dataset. Miliband was just ahead.

Cameron’s slightly laid back approach was probably correct and it struck me how the Tory slogan “chaos or confidence” is likely to resonate.

Miliband came very well prepared and with each fresh outing makes progress. What he did last night was to reinforce the Labour core which, if it turns out on May 7th, could possibly be sufficient – but will it?

Farage will have appealed strongly to UKIP supporters and this should give his party some polling traction after the slight decline in recent weeks. The question there is which other party will be most affected.

Clegg did well but he has a terrible image problem which is unlikely to be resolved. The party is running 50 by-high-octane election campaigns in seats it’s trying to hold and perhaps make one or two gains. The other 600 constituencies are largely irrelevant.

In political terms the Sturgeon’s strong performance should reinforce the SNP.

The general election betting markets barely moved overnight. On the spreads the Tories still have a 15 seat lead.

Mike Smithson

For 11 years viewing politics from OUTSIDE the Westminster bubble

For latest polling and political betting news follow @MSmithsonPB