It was an election that resulted in diminished numerical voter expectations on the part of all three leading parties, but the David Cameron led Conservatives ultimately finished on top.

The Tories anticipated winning a clear majority of parliamentary seats.  Instead they fell short by 20 seats, gaining 306.  The popular vote share of 36.1 percent was comparable to that achieved by Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair in his last of three national victories.

That early morning of 2005 Blair looked somber, like a losing candidate, while wife Cherie looked close to tears.  An immediate tug of war commenced in earnest thereafter to coax Blair to resign and give then Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown a chance to establish a positive record and image before facing Britain's voters.

Brown almost certainly knew from the outset that achieving another electoral victory for Labour would be difficult.  First of all, Blair sought to stay on longer than his party wanted him.  Increasingly broader hints turned to a gigantic shove at the Labour Party Conference at which Blair finally announced he would step down.

Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats got a boost from the candidates' televised debates, but Thursday on election day his standing was diminished compared to promising figures released after the first debate.

Such an occurrence was anything but surprising.  Followers of the 1992 U.S. presidential campaign saw a comparable phenomenon with Independent Party candidate Ross Perot.  He received the post-debate spike rather than President George H.W. Bush or his Democratic Party challenger, then Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas.

It was explained that the debate was "Perot's convention bounce."  There was more involved as well.  With citizens disenchanted with the way the current two party structure was functioning, Perot's critical analysis of the status quo was welcomed as a breath of fresh air.

An identical situation occurred in the British televised debates.  Articulate and telegenic Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats, at 43 the same age as Senator Jack Kennedy was when he faced Vice President Richard Nixon in the historic 1960 U.S. presidential campaign debates, decried the current system in which leadership has moved back and forth between the Conservatives and Labour.