BRENDA from Bristol spoke for many when she learned that there would be a snap general election on June 8th. “You’re joking?” she said to a BBC reporter. “Not another one. Oh, for God’s sake, I can’t stand this.” There was a general election in 2015, and the brutal EU referendum campaign in 2016. Now the battle buses are revving up once again. Talk to Britons around the country and plenty are fed up with all the politicking. According to data on Google searches, Britons’ interest in the election has been trending down for the past few days.

The true national mood is hard to measure, but in the daily newspapers the election is much less of an issue than you might think. In Tuesday’s edition of the right-wing Daily Mail, the first election story did not appear until page 12 (stories on misshapen asparagus and the contents of Catherine Zeta-Jones’s bathroom cabinet were more pressing issues). Today marks the sixth consecutive issue where the Mail has not put the election as its main story. Today’s Financial Times splashes on the tax cuts announced in America last night. Friday’s and Monday’s editions led on other matters.

On Friday the Sun published perhaps the best anti-election article: “the Brenda Agenda”, a “cut-out election-free guide for the next 49 days”. It helpfully pointed out that in the next few weeks Britons can look forward to the FA Cup Final, the Chelsea Flower Show and National Fish and Chips Day.

British political history also points to turnout being fairly low on June 8th. The election of February 1974 produced a hung parliament. Labour’s Harold Wilson wanted a majority in his favour so he called a second one, which took place that October. Turnout was six percentage points lower at the second election than at the first.

If turnout is unusually low this time around, the big question is how much this matters. Apathetic Britons may simply vote for what they already know (a status-quo bias), which would benefit the Conservatives. Yet some academic evidence suggests that the electorate punishes governments when they call snap elections. If Mrs May has misjudged the public mood, on June 8th she may do worse than she hopes.