What the people care about. You can get a bit carried away when politics is your game with the day-to-day happenings of who said what about whom or what. Which is why I regularly take the reality check of  looking at those website listings of what people are actually clicking on. Here are last night’s findings:

And what do we find? The only political story among the most-read on all those sites is an item about Julia Gillard returning to her suburban home. Hardly an indication that voters are really engaged with this election contest. And that cannot be good news for Labor, the current second-place-getter.

Support for the Coalition returns. Support for the Coalition has improved since the initial slump following the replacement of Julia Gillard by Kevin Rudd.

The indicator this morning had the probability of a Coalition victory at just over 82%.

Find a new Pinochet. It is the flagship of the Murdoch newspaper empire, so presumably the editorial opinion is not all that different from that of the boss.

Ah yes, midwifing a way to democracy with torture and murder. And Rupert Murdoch controls most of Australia’s daily newspapers!

Measuring gross environment product. From the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand comes an attempt to broaden the measure of progress beyond GDP. From now on the state government will tabulate a “gross environment product’ (GEP)” — a measure of the health of the state’s natural resources.

Choosing an election theme song. This is my choice for the song that will best help us get through the election campaign — from “A Little Night Music“:

Don’t you love farce?
My fault I fear.
I thought that you’d want what I want.
Sorry, my dear.
But where are the clowns?
Quick, send in the clowns.
Don’t bother, they’re here.

Send in the clowns

News and views noted along the way.