How are voters feeling? Which politicians are making progress? Just halfway to 7 May, there are already signs and portents aplenty

1. Nigel Farage is the politician most diminished by this campaign. Ukip is struggling to be heard amid the cacophony of a seven-way election, and its once-genial leader has proved surprisingly irritable under scrutiny. The sense that people secretly liked him, if not what he stood for, is fading.

2. Something has gone horribly wrong with political campaigning. The millions spent on electoral gurus, and all that manic dashing between sterile photo opportunities (less about meeting voters than generating the press coverage to reach more voters), feel oddly pointless when the polls are barely budging.

3. That doesn't mean nothing's happened. Early in the campaign a pollster told me there was a pool of voters who don't rate Ed Miliband, but want to vote Labour, and need an excuse to do so. His better-than-expected performance may be starting to provide that excuse.

4. The Tory campaign has suffered from spending much of its time arguing first that Miliband is hopeless and, when that didn't produce a breakthrough, that the SNP's Nicola Sturgeon is dangerous. It risks forgetting to make the case for itself.

5. The question of Scottish independence does not feel remotely "settled for a generation", despite little appetite for another referendum. Regardless of whether there's any formal pact or coalition, whoever becomes prime minister next will surely face a stronger SNP presence at Westminster. Potential crisis also looms if Scotland votes to stay and England to go in any future referendum on EU membership.

6. Sturgeonmania is real. But if Cleggmania teaches us anything, it's that what goes up fast risks coming down hard.

7. Nick Clegg is the new Tony Blair: the most successful leader of his party in living memory, in terms of delivering policy aims via government, but vilified for it. History may judge kindly; voters don't seem so inclined.

8. Sturgeon, the Greens' Natalie Bennett, Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson and Plaid Cymru's Leanne Wood have provided a preview of how voters react to female party leaders. So far, the results only boost female challengers to the three main party crowns.

9. The political stories breaking outside the campaign - the failure to prosecute Lord Janner, refugees drowning in the Mediterranean - have felt at times far more real and urgent than those inside it.

10. The question likely to dominate the next five years is how to get back from an era of coalition and minority government to winning big again. Time to swot up on Canada's Stephen Harper, who persevered through two minority administrations, before securing a majority; or closer to home, the SNP's Alex Salmond.