It has been a generation since the British electorate delivered such an inconclusive result at a general election. Not since Edward Heath posed the question “Who Governs Britain?” in February 1974 – the answer, of course, was “Not you” – has one of the two major parties failed to secure a majority in the House of Commons.

But this election result was only a surprise to consumers of mainstream media hype. It turned out that all the brouhaha about the performance of Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, in the first presidential-style television debate mattered not a jot. Indeed, his party lost five seats.

The dire state of the economy all but guaranteed a Labour defeat but it was not sufficient to give David Cameron's Conservatives a majority. The fundamental skew of the electoral map against the Tories denied it to them, just as serious students of the subject had predicted months ago. Changes in demography and population density; the growth of small parties; the extinction of the Conservative vote in Scotland; and the post-Thatcher critical mass of people who fear Tory cuts – these factors together always made it unlikely that Mr Cameron would win this election outright.