KEY POINTS:
Week four of the Australian election campaign ended with a more confused picture and a reassessment of the prospects of Prime Minister John Howard somehow surviving into a fifth and final term.
Opinion polls, while still showing Labor and Opposition leader Kevin Rudd with a commanding lead, also tracked a slight movement back to the Government.
While within the polls' margin of error, analysts suspected a whiff of a trend, perhaps pointing to a long-overdue narrowing of the gap between the major parties, and even - possibly - a last-minute charge back to the Government by the fearful.
Because this is what the campaign has now come to. The economy is front and centre, and with it Howard's argument that only his Government has the experience and skills to steer prosperity through the dangerous shoals ahead.
Howard's greatest ally - and his greatest ogre - was Tuesday's decision by the Reserve Bank to lift the official interest rate by 25 basis points to 6.75 per cent, increasing mortgage repayments by more than 8 per cent.
Because there has never before been an interest rate rise at such a politically critical time, no one is sure how this will play out in the electorate and party and professional pollsters are frantically trying to measure the impact.
Their first findings will appear during the weekend. Howard is counting on the fear factor to drive the large and potentially election-winning swinging pool of voters back into the Government's camp, arguing that the rate hike reflected the strength of the economy - a Coalition achievement.
He points to other factors beyond the Government's control - oil prices and the drought - and warns that with some bumpy patches ahead Labor cannot be trusted at the helm.
Rudd, in return, uses Howard's 2004 promise to keep interest rates at record lows as a cudgel against the Government, accusing it of mismanaging the economy and not using correct policies to keep inflation in check.
His problem is that Howard remains more highly regarded as an economic manager, and some of the gains he made in this field in the polls are beginning to leach away.