The Lib Dems think they can steal a march on Labour in south Wales. And Labour lethargy seems to be helping them, writes Kathy Sheridan.
By any standard, the atmosphere in Cardiff Central should be electric. There should be gangs of canvassers prowling the neighbourhoods, throwing insults, cluttering up the roundabouts with posters.
The Liberal Democrats missed the prize by 659 votes in 2001. This time round, it's their top target in Britain.
The surprise will be if they miss - not least to the 13-year Labour incumbent, Jon Owen Jones, who has admitted he is "not confident". This might sound like a good strategic move, but for reports that he seems to have stopped trying. His leaflet-dropping on "focus" issues is reckoned to be about two to the Lib Dems' five.
The only sign of an election at his campaign and constituency office out the residential Newport Road is a couple of banners in the front garden. The locked and rather forbidding-looking front door comes with various written injunctions not to ring the doorbell but to use the intercom, and not to appear with constituency problems as he is "forbidden" from dealing with them. It is all quite charmless and to any potential supporter pitching up to help, might look like rather too much trouble.
By contrast, his would-be Lib Dem usurpers (the Tories are dead in the water here) have a shop premises on the busy City Road, with a bright, glass-fronted walk-in entrance. Inside, every inch is buzzing with volunteers of all ages, non-stop phones and a red-hot printing press. The candidate herself, fresh from several radio and television interviews, is reapplying her lipstick and when she rises with a wide, confident smile, and reveals some rather impractical high heels. "A woman up against a man with a beard . . . What're your chances?" sighs a Labour activist.
But at 30, Jenny Willott is no neophyte. As well as an irreproachable background in heavyweight international development work for Oxfam and Unicef, she has worked for Barnardo's and now heads up Victim Support South Wales. In between, she worked at Westminster as head of office for Welsh Lib Dem MP Lembit Opik, and for various Welsh Assembly members. In the meantime, as a candidate herself, she managed to reduce the Labour majority from nearly 8,000 to 659 in 2001.
It was Willott whose (unidentified) picture was carried on the front of the London Independent's education supplement yesterday, beside Charles Kennedy, over a survey among teachers which showed that about half of those who voted Labour last time will not be doing so this time, and that, furthermore, it is the Lib Dems who are picking up the disenchanted.
Willott also stands to gain from the fact that Cardiff is a university city with 16,000 students, a sector she has carefully nurtured. Even if less than 5 per cent of them actually vote it'll make the crucial difference.
In any event, as in the rest of the country, the signs are that low turn-out will probably affect Labour more than the other parties. From canvass returns Willott's campaign manager is confident she will skate into Westminster with a 5,000-strong majority.
If she does, it won't be down to Welsh election fever. Despite the tight battle, few people profess much interest. Elderly people worry about swingeing council tax increases - which the Lib Dems propose to replace with a local income tax. Many are critical of the health service, which has been lambasted in four official reports in three years. Immigration rears its head regularly, as in "they're getting all the new houses and £1,000 a week" or "it's time to look after the Welsh". And our own great debate about binge-drinking, its impact on A&E services and the density of enormous city-centre pubs is replicated in full in Cardiff.
There are definite signs of disillusionment with Labour but these are difficult to distinguish from an overwhelming cynicism about all parties and politicians.
"They're only in it for what they can get out of it . . . and none of them's any different to the other," said a little man with a large gold tooth who will definitely not be darkening a polling booth.