Tom Watson's error shows how every vote can count
Should anyone ever need a lesson in how every vote counts, tell them this cautionary tale of Tom Watson. The campaigning MP for West Bromwich East voted the wrong way on an issue he had championed – a call to reduce the amounts that people can gamble using fixed odds betting terminals.
He was faced with a choice of accepting a report laid before the government, suggesting there was no need to lower the limit, or rejecting it.
Despite giving interviews, writing newspaper columns and having his picture taken with campaigners, he ended up backing the government.
The true horror of his mistake sunk in when an official report from the Public Bill Office came through suggesting the government had won the vote by 322 to 321.
It meant Mr Watson's vote could have swung the entire thing.
Faced with the prospect of having to tell fellow campaigners, church groups and constituents that he was personally to blame for the failure, he said he nearly jumped in the River Thames in humiliation.
But there was something wrong with the figures.
If they were to be believed, all but around seven of the country's MPs would have voted. This made no sense given that the Prime Minister was out of the country, other ministers would have had official business and there are almost always some MPs absent, even straight after Prime Minister's Questions on a Wednesday.
An intern in Mr Watson's office called up the counters to check and it turned out there was a typing error.
The number voting against the government was actually 231.
It meant the government had won by 91.
Mr Watson's campaign goes on. But I doubt he ever expected to find himself breathing a sigh of relief at being so resoundingly defeated on an issue he cares so deeply about.
Talking of votes, an opinion poll carried out by a UKIP donor suggests that Labour would comfortably hold on to Dudley North, were the General Election to be held now.
This is being talked up as a warning for the Tories, who, need to not only hold onto and consolidate all the marginal seats they won off Labour in 2010, but to actually win more if they want to get a majority.
It's certainly possible for a government to get a bigger mandate for its second term than its first. Margaret Thatcher proved that in 1983 when her majority went from 44 seats to 144.
But the number of people who voted Tory fell by 700,000.
Neither Ian Austin, the Labour incumbent, nor his Tory challenger Afzal Amin take the poll at more than face value.
As Mr Amin puts it: "This poll shows what the voting intentions of 526 people in Dudley North are likely to be in 2015."
Bill Etheridge, UKIP's spokesman in Dudley, gives it rather more credence, appearing to ignore his party's position in the poll in third place entirely and assuming the Tories are already finished.
He says: "The freefall in Conservative and Lib Dem support combined with the dramatic rise in UKIP support shows a trend that the General Election in Dudley North in 2015 is going to be a two-horse race between UKIP and Labour."
We have the best part of 18 months more to read and listen to this sort of analysis before everyone gets to have their say properly.
The only opinion poll that really counts is the one in the ballot box.
That is, unless voters do what I shall henceforth cruelly refer to as "a Tom Watson".
