A is for Another coalition

… on which nobody seems particularly keen. All the maths suggests that no party will get an overall majority in May, but the idea of a formal deal with a smaller party appointing ministers and signing up to a broad legislative agenda is out of favour.

The Conservatives say they would prefer to govern as a minority, while the Scottish National party claims it would rather offer limited support (confidence and supply) to the largest party than go into coalition.

And A is also for … American gurus such as Labour’s David Axelrod, who inspire awe in some Brits because they might once have been on Air Force One or walked through the White House talking fast like they do in The West Wing.

B is for BBC

… always a source of potential red meat to appease rightwing newspapers and voters. In the weeks leading up to polling day, expect a senior figure there to be accused of leftwing bias by, say, not covering a terminally dull Tory announcement. Or a newsreader will be chastised for showing insufficient respect for the army/orphans/Kate Middleton.

And B is also for… bacon sandwiches, the nemesis of Ed Miliband. Will the Labour leader dare to eat anything on the campaign trail?

C is for Celebrity

… endorsements – a double-edged sword. Ever since the days of Cool Britannia, politicians have longed to stand near famous people who might have had exciting sex or taken drugs, on the basis that they can’t do those things themselves.

But what celebrities giveth, celebrities taketh away: Myleene Klass memorably scolded Ed Miliband over the mansion tax, saying: “You can’t just point at things and tax them.” (Spoiler alert: you can.) Meanwhile, Dec said on 16 February that he couldn’t imagine Miliband as prime minister, and Ant said that he wanted to vote Labour, but didn’t know what their philosophy was any more. In a further crushing blow to Labour, Bill Oddie has apparently defected to the Greens.

D is for Debates

The important thing to remember here is that David Cameron totally, definitely, absolutely wants these to happen. It would be horrifically cynical to suggest he has calculated that he has nothing to gain and plenty to lose from allowing his rivals the extra exposure.

E is for Emergency Budget

… where the new chancellor looks at all the unfunded pledges made during the election campaign, cries for a bit, and then whacks up VAT on the basis that the next vote is ages away and everyone will have forgotten by then.

And E is also for … Europe, about which we have heard blessedly little of late because all the grumpy Tory backbenchers who normally agitate about it have had the fear of God put into them by their election guru Lynton Crosby. This happy state of affairs will last until approximately 10.01pm on 7 May.

F is for Fixed term

Back in 2011 when no one was paying attention, the coalition killed off the prime minister’s traditional ability to call an election on a whim.

Now, an early election requires a no-confidence motion in the government, or the agreement of two-thirds of the Commons.

This makes it hard for a lame-duck administration to give up and bail out; ask veterans of the 1974 Labour government about how painful minority rule can be, and watch them suck air through their teeth like a plumber giving an estimate on fixing your boiler.

G is for Gaffes and Greens

… and, indeed, both at the same time. The range of potential gaffes has expanded from not knowing the price of a loaf of bread to ringing a bell and the end falling off (Jeremy Hunt); getting stuck on a zipwire (Boris Johnson), tweeting a picture of a house (Emily Thornberry) and making weird faces while you eat (see B for Bacon sandwich). It will be mildly consoling to Natalie Bennett that gaffes imply a certain level of status – three years ago, she could have dangled from a zipwire with a flag, messily eating a bacon sandwich and ringing a defective bell and no one would have been any the wiser.

H is for Hampstead and Kilburn

…England’s most marginal seat, where Labour’s Glenda Jackson beat the Tory candidate by just 42 votes in 2010 (with the Lib Dems fewer than 1,000 votes behind). The smallest majority anywhere in the UK is Fermanagh & South Tyrone, where Sinn Féin’s Michelle Gildernew beat an independent candidate by four votes. But our strange new world means that many formerly safe seats are now marginals. Polling by Lord Ashcroft suggested that the SNP surge is so large it could unseat Danny Alexander, who has a majority of 8,765.

H also stands for … Hope what the Sun said Cameron would bring in 2010. Will the paper endorse him again?

I is for Immigration

… which you won’t have heard much about, because “we’re not allowed to talk about immigration”. Except for every Question Time, in Nigel Farage’s speeches, or when David Cameron pledged to cut net migration to “ntens of thousands”. Neither the Tories or Labour want to talk about immigration, it’s true. The irony is that the UK’s spectacular failure to hit Cameron’s target – net migration to Britain was 298,000 in the year to September 2014 - is evidence of his economic success. The vast majority come to Britain to work, and pay more tax than they consume in benefits and services.

J is for Johnson, Boris

The blond bombshell hopes to become MP for Uxbridge, which he plans to combine with his job as mayor of London until 2016.

Of course, if the worst were to happen, and Cameron were to lose the election and stand down – and oh, cripes, this is a hypothetical – and if one, er, were called to serve one’s country…

K is for Kingmakers

With the election on a knife-edge, there has never been more interest in the “red lines” of the smaller parties. Plaid Cymru’s Leanne Wood, the SNP’s Nicola Sturgeon and the Greens’ Caroline Lucas posed together in December to oppose austerity and demand a place in the debates.

Meanwhile, Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist party has never felt so loved: David Cameron invited its eight MPs for a knees-up in the Downing Street garden last summer.

L is for Long-term economic plan

Some time late last year, all Tory MPs were invited on an away day, where microchips were inserted into their brains to make them answer any question with reference to the “long-term economic plan”. By the election, you will have heard this phrase more often than your own name. Still, ten quid says you can’t explain what the plan actually is.

L is also for… “long, slow burner”, which is how Ed Balls described his bedroom style after being told that Mumsnet readers had described him as a “sexy beast”. (His leader fared less well, with one Mumsnetter suggesting: “I can vividly imagine Ed Miliband handcuffed to a radiator.”)

M is for Miliband

… whose election campaign is a balancing act. The public think “politicians are all the same”, so he needs to show how different he is from the Tories. At the same time, the Tories will be trying to paint him as a quasi-Marxist union stooge, so he has signed up to many of their policies, such as cutting the deficit and being tough on benefits and immigration. So different, but not too different. Good luck with that.

N is for New media

… which isn’t that new any more. The parties are always looking for innovative ways to reach voters – Ukip has 330,000 likes on Facebook, Labour’s press operation has its own Tumblr, and the Tories are getting around the rules forbidding paid-for television advertising by putting attack ads on YouTube. The leftwing parties are particularly hopeful about digital media, seeing it as a way to counter the rightwing domination of the press.

O is for Opinion polls

There is a lot of airtime and Twitter space to fill during an election, so the daily micro-movements of polls are scrutinised with a reverence once reserved for the entrails of a freshly killed goat. Conventional wisdom holds that the Tories need to be about seven points clear of Labour to secure a majority – but in the era of six-party politics, the idea of a uniform swing seems antiquated.

P is for Pink bus

Labour’s attempt to reach women by sending its female shadow cabinet ministers around the country was derailed by 24 hours of anguished debate about their mode of transport. The prize for the best response goes to the unnamed Labourite who pointed out that every female Lib Dem in the party’s history could fit inside the 16-seater minibus, “so they can fuck off”.

Q is for Quiet bat people

… a phrase coined by Nicola Murray, the hapless minister in the fourth series of The Thick of It, to describe ordinary working Britons. (“All British supremes” is rejected by Malcolm Tucker for sounding like a racist tribute act.) Every time you hear a reference to “hard-working families” during the election campaign, mentally replace it with Quiet Bat People. You’ll feel a lot better.

R is for Retiring MPs

About 90 parliamentarians are calling it quits at this election, including the 85-year-old father of the House Sir Peter Tapsell. Notable departures include new Labour grandees Gordon Brown, David Blunkett, Tessa Jowell, Jack Straw, Alistair Darling and Peter Hain; plus some MPs whose reputations have taken a knock in the last five years, such as Brooks Newmark (sexting); Eric Joyce (punching); Sir Malcolm Rifkind (lobbying) and Sarah Teather (ill-advised attempt at standup).

S is for Scotland, the SNP and Sturgeon

Last year’s referendum gave the nationalists a huge bump in the polls and party membership has boomed. Lord Ashcroft’s polling suggests that the SNP could win 50 seats (up from their current six) in May. Although that figure seems implausibly high. Any SNP gains will be at the expense of Labour and the Lib Dems, with major consequences for the overall seat tallies.

T is for Toast

… which is what Nick Clegg, Ed Miliband and David Cameron will be if they do not end up in government. Cameron’s party has never forgiven him for not winning a majority last time, while Labour activists know that Miliband’s personal ratings are a drag on the party as a whole. Under Clegg, the Lib Dems have enjoyed real power – but at a huge cost to their popularity. The frontrunners to replace them are currently Boris Johnson and Theresa May for the Tories; Andy Burnham, Liz Kendall and Chuka Umunna for Labour; and Tim Farron and Danny Alexander (if he keeps his seat) for the Lib Dems.

U is for Ukip

… which has felt a little neglected by the media since the big parties’ election machines whirred into life at the start of the year. The Ukip spring conference in Margate this weekend has been disconcertingly professional and gaffe-free, and it’s possible the party has finally purged all its candidates who think gay people cause flooding or say things like: “The only people I do have problems with are negroes.”

V is for Victory

… which the new prime minister will no doubt say was won on behalf of “hardworking families” (see Quiet Bat People).

V is also for… Vince Cable, who still exists.

W is for the Wesminster bubble

This strange natural phenomenon will be invoked repeatedly during the campaign. It’s a latter-day Versailles, where politicians and the media whoop it up together, drinking otters’ tears from silver goblets. People outside the Westminster bubble include privately educated ex-stockbroker Nigel Farage, who has held elected office since 1999, longer than either David Cameron or Ed Miliband. (There is no “Brussels bubble”, as this contravened rule 3 (i) (c) of the European Non-Industrial Uses of Soap Treaty passed in 1987.)

X is for an eXtremely long drawn-out process

The “short campaign” – when parliament is dissolved and MPs devote themselves full-time to campaigning – officially begins at the end of March.

But because of fixed terms, the Commons has been kicking its heels since late last year, and so it feels as though the election has been going on for ever.

Y is for Young people

… who don’t vote, and are therefore less important to politicians heading into an election than old people, who do. Just 44% of those aged 18-24 voted in 2010, compared with three-quarters of pensioners.

Y is also for Yvette Cooper, who also still exists.

Z is for Zzzz…

…the sound of waves of apathy rolling over the nation. Nine million women and 8.1 million men didn’t vote at the last election. To put that in perspective, the Conservatives won 10.7 million votes and Labour got 8.6 million.

Will some of those lost voters turn out again, now the two-party system is well and truly smashed? Let’s find out on 7 May.