It is probably best to look at how Canada handles Kim Campbell as guidance on this in the long run. As while the reasons are different they are both in the same vein of 'Yes they were technically Prime Minister'.

Honestly, I think a few of those were reform voters that we flipped during the campaign. The reform vote is often people frustrated and angry with the way things are, so you can talk them around to sort of vote 'f the lot of yous' and I suspect we got a decent amount of that.

I would say, and this is mostly from what I saw at the count, is that a lot of voters just put the X next to the box of the candidate they liked and left it there. I would speculate that was around 20% of all ballots, especially when it came to Labour voters.

It makes you look for savings in all the wrong places because departments are compelled to cut what they can, with limited time to understand the potential trade-offs. And deepens the impression that the government can’t commit to seeing through long-term projects.