Senior Tories are preparing for an election postmortem amid growing fears that the party is heading for another heavy defeat.
Jitters were compounded when news spread of today's Times Populus poll, which put the Tories on a historic low of 27%, and frontbenchers hit the phones to discuss tactics when polls close tomorrow night.
MPs on the modernising wing of the party will target the "dog whistle" strategy devised by the Tories' Australian campaign director, Lynton Crosby, which was meant to reach out to core voters without alienating those on the middle ground.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "We have perhaps tuned the whistle only to people who are inclined to vote our way," one frontbencher said of the leadership's decision to focus on asylum and immigration. "We have not tuned the whistle to a wavelength that will attract floating voters." Tories on the right will take the opposite view and declare that Michael Howard has failed to do enough to shore up the core vote by offering only modest tax cuts of £4bn. There is close interest in the movements of John Redwood, the rightwing shadow cabinet minister, who is said to be enraged that he has been silenced by the leadership after he described the £4bn tax cuts as a "downpayment".
Debate will inevitably raise questions about Mr Howard. But unlike in 2001, when MPs praised William Hague for resigning so quickly after his disastrous "Keep the Pound" campaign, Tories are divided about Mr Howard's future.
A large group of Tories, including modernisers and rightwingers, want Mr Howard to hold on for two broad reasons:
· There is a strong feeling that the party lost vital ground in 1997 and 2001, when John Major and William Hague resigned within 24 hours of defeat.
· Mr Howard would do the party a favour by staying around to change the rules to ensure MPs are given the final say in leadership elections.
A small group of MPs want Mr Howard to leave quickly if the party fails to make significant progress by, for example, matching the 209 seats Labour won in its "suicide note" election of 1983. Mr Howard would need to win more than 40 seats to pass that barrier.
Many of these Tories believe that Mr Howard's age - he will be 68 at the next election if parliament runs its full course - means that he should stand down quickly because he would inevitably be seen as a caretaker leader.
The questions about Mr Howard mean that close attention will be paid to potential leadership candidates. Supporters of David Davis, the shadow home secretary, are showing strong discipline, not least because he has a fight on his hands to see off a Liberal Democrat challenge in Haltemprice and Howden.
Eyebrows were raised on Monday when Liam Fox, the Tory co-chairman, made a speech which some saw as setting out his stall. Acting as the warm-up for Mr Howard at a rally in London's Docklands, Mr Fox departed from the campaign script when he warned that the prime minister's admiration for Europe posed a threat to the future of the UK.
The Tory leadership was holding firm last night, insisting that Mr Howard will stand by his strategy on the final day of campaigning. But the Howard camp realises that his famous eleventh word - accountability - may be applied to them on Friday if it is clear they have failed to reach out to the middle ground.
One former cabinet minister said: "If we were a halfway competent oppposition we would now be five points ahead. We are not ahead because there is a battle for middle-ground voters between New Labour, the Liberal Democrats, stay-at-home Labour voters and - in last place - the Tories."
