Let's deal with a couple of realities straight up.

Politics is not a nice business, or a particularly friendly one. Often it is not one driven by great noble dreams.

It is a tough, pragmatically transactional business and not for the faint hearted. You deal with people you don't necessarily like, to get an outcome that you can all live with.

Yet these realities are not the ones voters are asked to assess. Nor are they the basis on which we conduct our relationships with our political leaders.

As electioneering has become more and more presidential in style, and the clear lines of ideological difference between the major political parties have blurred, we have increasingly been sold stories about the personalities and lofty ambitions of our political leaders.

We are supposed to learn to like them and their endearing quirks; to recognise them as one of us; yet to respect them as something different.

With the Coalition's internal ideological war raging (but mostly not spoken of during the election campaign), it is hugely constrained on what it can offer as a policy platform. Its campaign has therefore rested almost entirely on establishing a persona for its third prime minister in five years.

Scott Morrison: vote for him because he's just your average dorky footy loving bloke.

Yet, during the campaign, he has proved himself a master of the brush off: a difficult question about his government's history or policies? It is brushed off as already dealt with yesterday, or in the budget, or by someone else.

Or there is just the spectacular and immediately disprovable assertion. For example, asked about a UN report warning that one million species were in danger of being wiped out, the Prime Minister asserted that the government had passed legislation to deal with this in the last week of the Parliament.

But no, it hadn't.

'Just don't like him'

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten shake hands before the first leaders debate. ( AAP: Nic Ellis )

The Prime Minister, who has been in the job for just eight months, is up against an opposition leader who has been in his job for six years, and a man regularly profiled in newspaper features as a likely future Labor leader for much of the past 20 years.

We have had all the same photo opportunities thrust at us to get Bill Shorten to look real to us: the footage of him running which many would prefer not to see; the shots with the family, the visits to businesses and factory floors; the drinks in the pub.

Yet somehow, in that strange way of things, many Australians have just never really warmed to Bill Shorten.

Ask people about it and it is something most can't define.

Those who tell you, "I can't stand the bloke/don't trust him/just don't like him" can't really tell you why.

And they number Labor voters as much as Liberal voters.

It almost certainly goes back to his first exposure to many voters as one of those who brought down, first Kevin Rudd, then Julia Gillard.

And maybe it would be extraordinary if fewer people told you they didn't like him, given the way the Coalition, and particularly Tony Abbott in his days as Prime Minister, relentlessly attempted to use the institutions of the state to destroy Mr Shorten's reputation, most notably through the trade union royal commission.

Yet Mr Shorten survived that ordeal: still standing, if bruised, from a two-day grilling in a royal commission witness box, an experience that we have seen destroy some of our most senior bankers.

Popularity

Bill Shorten popularity has improved during the campaign, but he has never really been fully embraced by voters. ( ABC News: Matt Roberts )

For much of Mr Shorten's time as leader he has been seen as a drag on the party's vote, particularly in the early days of the Turnbull prime ministership.

That gap has narrowed and in the 2019 campaign, voters have had a better chance to look at Mr Shorten than at any other time in his leadership.

He goes into the final days of the election campaign with a slightly more negative satisfaction rating among voters than Tony Abbott did in 2013 — a prime minister embraced at that time as a self-created alternative to the chaos of Labor in government at the time, but not much liked by voters even as he delivered a smashing win for his party.

But this year's campaign has given the Opposition Leader a series of transformative moments in the eyes of voters.

The leaders debates — so often purely seen in terms of knock out blows and "winners" — gave Mr Shorten the time to explain and defend his sometimes contentious policies; they gave him the time to warm up and counter the Coalition attacks with humour and deadly speed.

The front page of the Daily Telegraph accusing Bill Shorten of omitting information about his mother's career. ( Daily Telegraph )

A relentless campaign against Mr Shorten and Labor by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp papers came spectacularly unstuck over claims he had misrepresented the career of his dead mother.

His angry and emotional response gave many voters their first glimpse of a human being they could relate to.

It also raised questions about whether the misfire might ultimately constrain the empire from one last desperate assault on Mr Shorten's character in the dying days of the campaign.

The importance of being liked, or wanting to be liked, should only ever be a skill set for politics, not the defining feature of our leaders.

The more important question really should always be what the leader actually does.

Yet in Mr Shorten's case, there is an argument that this very ambivalence towards the Opposition Leader has had a profound impact on the shape of a Labor government, if elected on May 18.

Building a body of policy

A target for the number of electric vehicles on the roads is one of a number of policies Labor has announced. ( ABC News: Marco Catalano )

Mr Shorten and Labor get considerable credit for being prepared to outline politically controversial policies on tax and spending well before the election, with its proposals to wind tax concessions back for negative gearing existing properties and for cash refunds from the dividend imputation system.

Yet the history of the embrace of these decisions was heavily framed by Mr Shorten's relationship with voters.

Internally, the policies may have helped lock in the left behind the Opposition Leader, but externally they were seen as an antidote to the problem faced by Labor when Malcolm Turnbull was installed as prime minister in 2015.

Turnbull's initial soaring popularity in the late months of 2015 were at the centre of Labor's decision to announce changes to both negative gearing and capital gains tax.

The feeling was "we're drowning here", says one source, "we need to do something to stop politics being purely a Malcolm Turnbull versus Bill Shorten competition".

"He'd been resisting it for ages", says another, "he had to roll the dice and opt for policy to be the solution for reframing the political competition instead of just personality."

The new policies were announced in February 2016 and, from the perspective of Labor, that began the process of turning the tide that is still rolling in as election day rolls around in 2019: the pressure was back on the Coalition to have a few big policy ideas too.

There were other considerations, too, of course. Labor knew better than anyone that it had left office in 2013 leaving big time bombs for the Coalition in the form of big spending commitments beyond the four years of the budget cycle in health, education and the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

If it wanted to seek a return to office promising to "restore" those Labor policies, it would need a lot of money to do so.

To be fair, Mr Shorten has a long history of calling for big tax reform and particularly removing tax concessions.

In 2005, he was proposing among other things, a top rate of just 30 cents in the dollar for high-income earners to be funded by "cutting out all the business tax rorts and business welfare" out of the system.

Keeping a party united

Bill Shorten (centre) with colleagues (left to right), Jim Chalmers, Tanya Plibersek, Penny Wong and Chris Bowen. ( ABC News: Matt Roberts )

But politics is always a matter of ideas and presentation — and timing.

Witness the transformation of John Howard on the GST from Mr Never Ever to steely advocate after he had finally won office but found himself without an agenda, and under pressure from the business community.

The questions, judgements and opportunities for Bill Shorten as Prime Minister will be different.

If he wins, his relationships within his own government, and party, will change.

He has been an inordinately lucky politician in that he now benefits from a change in leadership protocols, formed in the wake of the leadership carnage of which he was a part, that make it hard to unseat him.

And he has been lucky in the implosion of the other side of politics on his watch.

He is also exceptionally lucky in the quality of his colleagues which old Labor hands regularly tout as the most talented frontbench since the early days of the Hawke-Keating government.

The comparisons are often made between Mr Shorten and Mr Hawke.

One clear difference is that Mr Hawke always kept himself well out of the machinations of the party organisation.

Mr Shorten has notably managed to keep his parliamentary party united, despite at least two people, Mark Butler and Anthony Albanese, wanting his job at various times. He has not shunned them but instead given Mr Butler one of the most politically important portfolios, climate change, and Mr Albanese the crucial infrastructure job.

He talks to people. He returns calls. He listens to arguments. Pockets of resentment cannot fester.

He chairs civilised and inclusive cabinet meetings. Everyone gets their say but some say he has a preference for ultimately making contentious decisions within the confines of his leadership group.

This now comprises the parliamentary leaders: Mr Shorten, Tanya Plibersek, Penny Wong and Don Farrell, along with shadow treasurer Chris Bowen, House Leader Tony Burke and workplace shadow Brendan O'Connor.

Nothing much goes to shadow cabinet that hasn't already been through the leadership group, and there have been a number of widely noted occasions when shadow cabinet has been stopped so that the leadership group could go off and decide where the discussion would land.

But Captain's Calls as such are not Mr Shorten's style.

'Bill's a dealer'

Bill Shorten talks at the North Metropolitan TAFE while campaigning in Western Australia. ( ABC News: Matt Roberts )

The election campaign has shown Mr Shorten's strengths and weaknesses.

He is a confidence player: early on, the sheer weight of expectations that he would win seemed to strangle him and he made some stumbles; then, having had a chance to air his views in the leaders debates and on Q&A, his confidence continued to grow.

Journalist Margaret Simons wrote of him in 1995 that he "likes to be liked, and he is good at it too".

"He is handsome, smart, boyishly charming and a reflex flatterer. He is almost a flirt. His weakness, say those who know him, is that he needs to bask in the glow of others' love and admiration. He needs to be loved."

So it is ironic that he has reached the cusp of a lifelong ambition to be Prime Minister without necessarily being liked all that much by voters.

Maybe that will happen in office.

One former colleague sums him up cheerily but pragmatically:

"He is a completely disingenuous lying bastard whose ambition knows no bounds.

"However, none of these things stop you being a prime minister, or for that matter, a good prime minister. In fact, they are probably job qualifications."

Facing the prospect of a hostile Senate, Mr Shorten's negotiating skills will be crucial.

The experience of negotiations over the Manus and Nauru medevac bills last year suggest that Labor's parliamentary negotiating resources, including Mr Shorten, his Senate leaders, Mr Burke and Mr Albanese, should not be underestimated.

"Bill is a dealer," says the former colleague. "And he is a good dealer because he's not committed to anything in an ideological sense."

"You can really be a formidable negotiator if you don't give a f*** about anything."

Closing in on his goal

Bill Shorten invoking Gough Whitlam during his final speech in the 2019 campaign. ( ABC News: Matt Roberts )

If he wins on Saturday, he will lead his experienced but relatively young team into government with hopefully minimal disruption and rewards to be handed out.

At least two of our last prime ministers — Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott — ended up being cursed through their prime ministerships by statements made in the last few hours of the election campaign.

In Ms Gillard's case, it was an interview in which she said there would be "no carbon tax under a government I lead".

Footage of Mr Abbott's pledge — on SBS of all places — that there would be no spending cuts across a wide range of portfolios would haunt him as he broke promise after promise in the 2014 budget.

So how you deal with these final hours until the polls close at 6pm on Saturday can prove crucial in all that follows.

With less than two days to go, Mr Shorten has not yet stumbled. His relentless journey to fulfil an overwhelming ambition is almost over.