Cheer up, I say, or move aside for someone who understands that there is something special — magical even — about the moment the country makes its choice of whom should lead it and, just as important, we all choose who should represent us where we live. Lest I may not have convinced you (or even myself ), permit me to put down a few propositions designed to allay those pre-election blues.

You don't know the result

Yes, I do know what the polls say. Of course, I know how big a swing it would take to get Labour out. But then, I recall, you knew that Kinnock was headed for Number 10 in 1992. And then there was Wilson in 1970. Let's not forget Gore in 2000, or our old friend Bob Worcester who declared the other night: “It's President Kerry”, just hours before it became plain it was “Byebye Kerry”. The polls do get it wrong, and those who quote them with nearbiblical certainty get egg on their faces and have viewers wondering why we're slower than Pavlov's dogs to cotton on. Ah yes, you say, as someone well -versed in all matters psephological, polls may get it wrong when the race is tight but not now the result appears so certain. Listen, then, to John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University. He says a hung parliament could result from a rise in Lib Dem support that helps the Tories win seats from Labour. You don't buy that? Fine. My point is you don't know and I don't know and we shouldn't report as if we do.

The polls aren't the story

For all headline writers may wish otherwise, polls don't tell us what the country will do on election day. They tell us what people say they think they would do if today were election day. Sometimes there is a story in how politicians react to the polls — by panicking (remember Margaret Thatcher's “Wobbly Wednesday”?), with triumphalism (Neil Kinnock's Sheffield moment), or by changing policy or strategy (the birth of William “14 pints” Hague), but a poll on its own isn't a story. It's not just that it can be wrong. Polls are dull, damn it. If I hear another question (or should that be assertion) to a Tory along the lines of: “That's all very well, but you're flat-lining in the polls,” I'll scream. What can the interviewee say? Perhaps this would satisfy: “You're quite right. There's absolutely no point my being here, let alone working out what policies I believe are right for the country's future. What's more, you earn a damn sight more than me, so I'll take up punditry instead.”

What's the hapless listener or viewer supposed to think? “Well, they already clearly know how I'm going to vote and they won't let me hear what I need to make up my own mind. So I'll switch over to Big Brother instead.” Come to think of it, imagine if Big Brother worked this way. When Jason had wept in the diary room after that big fight, imagine if he'd been told: “Forget it mate — our poll shows you're leaving anyway.” I can't help thinking it would make the programme less compelling.

Turnout can go up as well as down

Just like the markets, turnout doesn't always go in one direction. This may well prove to be another “apathy” election in which one word — “Whatever” — defines the attitude of millions. But, as America shows, it's not a one-way bet. The war in Iraq may energise a part of the electorate that was indifferent last time. This year's local, Euro and London mayoral contests all showed increases in turnout, albeit at 40 per cent and below. The turnout in the North East referendum was close to 50 per cent. The lesson appears to be that people will turn out when there's something tangible to vote on.

Voters are interesting...

What's true in American elections should be true here too. I had the good fortune to report from the road in Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona during the U.S. elections (although I was somewhat less fortunate to travel and sleep in a Winnebago). The people I met weren't just colourful, they were revealing. Are people here really less interesting? We may not be able to find a match for the stetson-wearing Dodge dealer at a rodeo who told me he wouldn't buy a used car from John Kerry, but can't we find equivalents to the brother of a marine who died in Fallujah who spoke movingly about wrestling with his conscience about how to vote? Shouldn't we try? TV reality-shows are based on .nding what's interesting in otherwise ordinary people. Can't we do it too — without, I might add, getting them to swap wives or share a house with a bunch of people they've never met before? Incidentally, I await ITV's “Vote for Me” — a kind of Pop Idol meets Question Time — with excitement and a little trepidation.

...it's the electoral horserace that's dull

What turned viewers off in the coverage of the U.S. election was pictures of endless cheering crowds, grinning candidates, waving placards, and reporters shouting to be heard above the din. Viewers know they're watching a confection and don't want to hear us point out that obvious fact. They certainly don't want to hear us commenting ad nauseam on “the mood” in so-and-so's camp. Unless, that is, we can offer real insight. “Well, Trevor, they know they've lost and are just going through the motions” is news. The oh-so predictable “I've just spoken to Mr X's aides and they insist they can win” is not.

But the campaign can be interesting...

We shouldn't dismiss what Alastair Campbell calls “process stories” (he really means “stories about me”). Did you know that Labour had technology that allows John Prescott (or rather a recording of the great man) to call thousands of people simultaneously to tell them to get out and vote? I'm impressed, even though the couple woken up by Prezza on the line at 2am ahead of the referendum on the North East Assembly were less so. Were you aware that the Tories claim to be able to predict how you'll vote simply by feeding your postcode into a PC? What the insiders call “below-the-line” campaigning — using the internet, phone, DVD etc — can be revealing and fascinating. So can efforts to target churches, mosques or the 2004 equivalent of Mondeo man or Worcester woman.

...and so can policy

Propose discussion of higher education policy in a pub and you'll clear the room. Suggest students are poverty stricken and should get more money and you might not drink your pint alone. Ditto the idea of bombing Iran, putting your taxes up, leaving Europe, paying Mums to look after their children at home, forcing people to pay to carry ID cards... If you can get people talking in a pub about this, or fill an hour's phone-in, you should be able to make an interesting TV news report. I would suggest, however, that it might be best not to start this with the words: “Now Justin's at the big screen to look at the parties' different approaches to education.”

Robinson's law of elections is that the issue that dominates the years after an election barely gets mentioned in the campaign itself. The poll tax scarcely featured in the 1987 election but it helped bring down Margaret Thatcher. So it was with the ERM and John Major in 1992. Iraq was, of course, not on the agenda last time around. Neither was the pensions crisis. We should try harder to spot what lies hidden round the corner, especially when it is what the parties do not want us to look at.

Negative campaigns aren't as much fun as reporters think

We're all suckers for the witty knocking copy of U.S. negative commercials. My favourite is an ad with a pack of hounds “on the trail” of a senator with a dismal voting record. Yet we should be wary of being drawn into the depressing cycle of claim, counter-claim, pre-buttal and rebuttal which comes to obsess newsrooms and party war-rooms. The Hartlepool byelection was a deeply depressing preview of what might be to come with its absurdly personal attacks. My e-mail inbox is already being filled daily with depressing messages claiming that “X is soft on crime” and “Y is the shoplifter's friend”. Anyone too young to recall the row in 1992 about Jennifer's Ear — a Labour Party broadcast about a girl waiting for an operation — should be forced to watch every report until they remember just how bored they felt.

There isn't just one election

The campaign is not simply a contest between two candidates to occupy Number 10. We appear to be in a world of three-party or even multi-party politics. Alongside traditional Lab/Tory races and the Tory/Lib battles there will be more and more Lab/Lib .ghts. Throw in UKIP, Respect, the Greens, the nationalists, and, yes, the BNP, and you have an unpredictable mix. There maybe also be independents attempting to follow in the footsteps of Martin Bell, and of Dr Richard Taylor, whose campaign to keep his local hospital open ended a ministerial career. Lastly, local results do matter to people and not just as building-blocks in a national campaign.

We shouldn't reinvent the rules of good reporting

The next general election campaign will be my fifth. In each I've played a different role — TV current affairs producer, programme editor, radio correspondent and then 24-hour news correspondent. This will be my first on network news and my first at ITN. At all times I and most people I've worked with have done their best to make elections interesting. Where we've gone wrong is when we've forgotten the rules of good reporting which we follow in “peace time”. Thus we've had over-extended news bulletins, and stop-watch and spreadsheet measurements of balance producing strings of tedious and contradictory soundbites, dull “issue” reports and the like. We are naturally, fairly and legally under a requirement to show balance at election time, but if that leads us to produce unwatchable or incomprehensible reporting, we are getting something badly wrong. We should identify the story of the day and tell it as compellingly as we can.

Convinced? No? Well, like it or not the election's coming and we have a duty to make it interesting. Like me, my TV colleagues — Marr, Boulton, Goodman, Bell, Mardell, Kearney et al — are believers in politics and the political process. I know some politicians think one or two of us are rather more interested in ourselves. Others will judge that. What I do know is that we'll all do our best to make the election as interesting as we can. And so we should.