The one — and perhaps only — thing that really can be confidently predicted about elections is that the way they are analysed before polling day is almost always at wild variance with the analysis post-polling day.

That is partly for the obvious reason that the combination of votes on the day is never quite what people expect.

And it is partly because, whatever the underlying result, the way all the players frame the result miraculously changes in the space of a couple of hours.

Prepare for the spin

For example, keep a particular eye out for the Prime Minister on Saturday night as we see the results in Wentworth, regardless of the actual result but particularly if the Liberals lose the seat.

The government's message through much of the by-election campaign has been that voting for Labor's Tim Murray or independent Kerryn Phelps would be a vote for instability. Something suggests that won't be the message if that is the actual result.

And Scott Morrison's revamped message will be just one of a storm of messages on Saturday night, whatever the outcome, attributing the outcome to the government's climate change policy, asylum seeker policy, the toppling of Malcolm Turnbull, voter disenchantment with the major parties, or a sea change in the electorate which is shifting to, or from, the left or right.

By all means, listen to all the spin on Saturday night about the result of the Wentworth by-election, but it should not blot out the host of really important messages that have emerged already from this by-election, based on what has already happened, and which are messages which might be forgotten but can't be undone.

Voters are splintering

The first message is that this by-election really is an important one, for what it has already produced as much as what will follow from it.

It has galvanised voters in the electorate and got them engaged in a way that stands in stark contrast to the disillusioned voters across the country who have stopped listening to our politicians.

Despite being such a solidly safe Liberal seat historically, the social diversity of the electorate, and its socially progressive but economically conservative makeup, makes it the most interesting of Petri dishes for all the politicians who claim to speak for "the average voter".

And what we have already seen in published polling is that in this very safe seat, the vote really is splintering, and splintering away from the major parties.

Sorry, this video has expired Scott Morrison heckled at press conference

Stunts appear cynical

The second message is that the smarty pants politics of pulling stunts like suddenly announcing legislation to stop discrimination against children at religious schools, when you have been pushing for discrimination against teachers at public schools, giving a whopping $2 million to a surf lifesaving club, and a further $2.2 million to strengthen security for Jewish community venues and events, in the cynical view that it will rescue a seat, is pretty high-risk politics these days.

It is not as high-risk, however, as the unprecedented unleashing of the most sensitive of foreign policy issues purely to capture a few votes of one particular community.

That's the third message that our politicians should take out of this election, whatever the result.

There is a reason you don't do this.

There is a reason why foreign policy, in the main, stays out of domestic political plays, as opposed to outside the reach of domestic politics.

And it is not clear it has done the government any good anyway. Jewish opinion seems divided on the move.

A "small L" liberal Jewish group in the electorate editorialised on Friday that:

"Morrison's cynicism is, perversely, offensive to the Jewish community in that it presumes Jewish loyalty to Israel would trump their concerns with Australian issues. The announcement also treats Israel as if it is a domestic plaything, only for the PM to have revealed his naivety at how far-reaching its impacts on foreign relations can be."

Willing to do anything?

Scott Morrison tried to appease voters in Wentworth on almost all the sensitive issues in the electorate. There was even a shift in language — if not policy — on asylum seekers.

It is notable that the one area where there really wasn't a move was climate change, even though groups on the left have argued, and are continuing to argue, that it is the issue that will determine the election outcome.

Whatever the result, the prime minister has revealed himself as prepared to do and say anything for electoral advantage.

It is a step well beyond the sort of political pragmatism and responsiveness for which he was given credit in the first few weeks of his time in office.

This has obvious ramifications for how we view the prime minister after the by-election, and in the lead-up to the general election, along with how the debacles in Canberra this week prompt us to look at the government as a whole.

The spectre of a government that can send its senators in — apparently oblivious to what they were doing — to vote in support of a motion by Pauline Hanson, that called on the Senate to acknowledge "the deplorable rise of anti-white racism and attacks on Western civilisation", can only leave voters wondering.

Some voters feel that the sacred city of Jerusalem is being used as a political football. ( Reuters: Ammar Awad )

A Liberal civil war?

Even the Prime Minister was predicting the loss of the seat on Friday — though the government obviously has an interest in talking down its prospects.

If that happens, the risks are not to the stability of the country. The parliament will continue to function.

But the risks are that the civil war that now dominates the conservative side of politics will only escalate, as the various factions fight over what, this week, was looking to all the world like a carcass hanging in the breeze.

While the Nationals were not in the Wentworth race, their current agony of indecision about their leadership has in part erupted because the Liberals are in such a mess.

As one source said this week, if the Nationals are able to ride the blue tide of the Liberals into government and into seats around the country, they do not need a charismatic leader of their own.

But the Liberal Party is now in such disarray that this is no longer the case.

The rumblings against Michael McCormack — if they come to anything — will not be based on personal hostility but on politicians scrambling to try to secure the best chance they've got of getting re-elected.

Michael McCormack's popularity is now more critical as the Liberals' position weakens. ( ABC News: Nick Haggarty )

The irony is …

Finally, an irony. It is a woman who poses the biggest threat to the Liberals in their safe seat of Wentworth.

And there are signs Julia Banks — the Liberal MP who announced she would not recontest her seat because of the toxic culture of her party — may stand as an independent.

All this makes it only more astonishing that the same conservative forces who have pushed the Liberal Party consistently to the right, think that the correct response if Wentworth is lost is to push for more control, and even more conservatism.

Laura Tingle is 7.30's chief political correspondent.