What seems to have been the crucial thing, if you believe what the pundits say - but how do they know these things anyway? - is that a lot of people, particularly first time voters, saw the government as trying to use the atrocity as a way of stampeding voters in their direction, by jumping to a conclusion that suited them, in advance of the facts. And that looked a pretty disgusting thing to do, in the circumstances.

I'd have thought that it would have been a much better thing to do to delay the elections for a week or so, to allow a period of mourning, and to make it possible for more of the facts to be sorted out.