Retail politics used to mean the baby-kissing and town-hall mode of campaign time, which we can still see: witness Abbott’s awkward military boot camp squats in Darwin, or Rudd’s awkward selfies with Muslim voters in Western Sydney. But this performance feels tired and incidental to the game somehow. In politics circa 2013, retail politics also describes what happens behind the scenes as the parties subject themselves to hard analysis, not of policy but of market dynamics.