Regardless of the ultimate outcome, more than one party has genuine reasons to feel aggrieved at the results of last Thursday's general election in the United Kingdom.
Steadfastly opposed as it is to reform of the electoral system - generally shorthand for some form of proportional representation - the British Conservative Party cannot but have been bitterly disappointed at its share of the spoils in the form that they count: seats in the Parliament.
With a mere 16,000 votes spread over the 19 constituencies in which it came closest to winning, the Tories would have gained a parliamentary majority.
That is a minuscule number when set alongside the 10.2 million total votes cast for the party and only serves to emphasise the limitations of the current system.
So, too, does the way in which inner-city seats, with relatively small electorates and constituencies producing low voter turnouts, privilege the Labour Party.
According to the Election Centre at Plymouth University in the south of England, had the percentage of the popular vote been reversed so that Labour won 36% and the Tories 29%, Labour would have been returned to power with a majority of 64 seats.
As it is, David Cameron's party with 306 needs that further 19 to achieve such status.
Party leaders may well have been reflecting ruefully on this as they continued negotiations yesterday with the Liberal Democrats, seeking to put in place a workable and lasting coalition.
Nick Clegg's Liberal Democrats may not have put electoral reform at the very top of their list for fear of scuttling talks before they even got going, but it will have been among their foremost demands.
When their share of the popular vote and the number of seats won is compared with those of the other parties, it is not hard to see why.
The Conservatives won 306 seats with 36% of the vote, Labour 258 with 29% and the Lib Dems 57 with 22%.
In a 650-seat Parliament, these same results under a directly proportional system would have delivered 234 to the Tories, 188 to Labour and 143 to the Lib Dems - a gain for the latter of 86 seats - and the rest to sundry other parties.
Even accounting for the fact that proportional representation systems are generally more complex, this is a huge discrepancy.
For its part, the Labour Party's Road to Damascus moment in indicating prior to the election that it would contemplate electoral change, and again following it as Gordon Brown, like a recalcitrant tenant, did his best to hang on in Downing St, seems like little more than expediency.
After all, it had some 13 years in power, many of them with crushing majorities, to initiate electoral reform and chose not to.
History may not smile kindly on Mr Clegg and his reformist intentions.
As with much else in life and politics, timing is all.
Mr Clegg's misfortune is that his attempts to level the playing field of the general election poll have coincided with Britain finding itself in an almost unprecedented economic mess.
Singleminded resolve will be required to deal to the country's devastating deficit - which will in turn require ruthless cost cutting in some quarters.
Whatever else they might bring to the government of nations, coalition arrangements, especially those constituted from widely disparate sectors of the political spectrum, seldom come equipped for the hardest and most decisive of actions.
While the Conservatives might have cause for dissatisfaction with the electoral system, they are steadfastly opposed to proportional representation.
In Tory-Lib Dem coalition talks, Mr Cameron will have been prepared to make other concessions - on defence, civil liberties, banking reform, perhaps - but proportional representation almost certainly will not have been among them.
The election result has presented Mr Clegg with choices: going into government with the old Conservative foe, risking alienating many in his own party ranks; or throwing in his lot with Mr Brown and a governing coalition otherwise comprising a number of smaller independents, the chief danger of this being the perception of Labour, a distant second in the poll, as tarnished.
This could work against any subsequent referendum on electoral reform, thus defeating the chief purpose of such an alliance.
The markets, already spooked by Greece, have shown their impatience.
Mr Clegg's role as "king-maker" - one he might have formerly anticipated with some eagerness - has been served up by the voting public along with a generously sized poisoned chalice.
