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Commentators discuss what they think the Conservatives would have to do to get ahead in the election.

that the Tories "have a fortnight to save themselves from disaster":

"Yesterday, Kenneth Clarke gave a masterclass in why hung parliaments are bad for the country and why the economic crisis is of such severity that uncertainty would be a national calamity. This should be the exclusive Tory message from here till polling day. "For the moment, however, the only certainty is that the country wants change. Tonight, it will watch Mr Clegg knowing that he is not it. And it will wait for Mr Cameron to show why he might make a better fist of things than Mr Brown. This time, he will look straight into the camera, and hope the public finds what they are looking for. After May 6, there will be plenty of time to contemplate the whys and hows of the outcome. Now, though, the situation is perilous, changeable, and recoverable - but only just."

that the key for Mr Cameron to win against Mr Clegg is to make clear how his change it different to Lib Dem change:

"After 13 years of Labour rule, time for change was his exclusive preserve - until Mr Clegg looked into the camera during the first leaders' debate and turned his relative obscurity into a claim to be new, different, the change. Mr Clegg's is a different brand of 'change', a post-expenses, no-more-business-as-usual kind of change, that threatens to supersede the freshness of Mr Cameron. And it has changed the terms of debate for the run-in to polling day. 'We need to win a whole series of arguments about the problems of a hung Parliament,' Mr Cameron conceded."

that the Conservative campaign is cracking up:

"The cracks were beginning to show yesterday as shell-shocked David Cameron's election hopes took another battering. Tory MPs turned on their hapless leader after latest figures showed the party was flatlining in the polls. They admitted they were already fighting a lost cause - and accepted they will not win a majority."

David Cameron's way of dealing with a man dressed up in a chicken suit employed by the Mirror to follow him around:

"If the chicken provided Mr Cameron with one of his better moments, when on Tuesday he joshed with it in as endearing a fashion as tightly gritted teeth allowed, that's not how the Mirror chose to report it on yesterday's front page. But it is excused the confusion on a news day so frantic that only one tiny paragraph could be spared to gloss over Labour's abysmal showing in every poll published the previous evening. The key thing when facing brutal humiliation, the Mirror reminds us, is retaining professional self-respect. This enables a newspaper to bounce back quickly, live long and prosper."

the Tories have grappled with the question of how they will improve voters' lives for 30 years and suggests that David Cameron would be successful if he attacks Gordon Brown:

"What can be done in the debate tonight at least is to establish more clearly why GB shouldn't go on being prime minister. Because if David Cameron can do that, if he can atleast establish a gap between Labour and the Conservatives even at much lower levels of support for each than we imagined then he opens up the possibility of doing very well again."

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