GOOD news, my fellow voters.

All the election pamphlets seem to have arrived through the letterboxes so I’ve read every single one of them right to the end so you don’t have to. Here is a quick summary. Alba: referendum, referendum, referendum. All For Unity: stop a referendum. Conservatives: stop a referendum!!! SNP: free nursery education, free school meals, free prescriptions, more money for the NHS, more money for the police, and more money for schools. Barely any mention of a referendum at all. How strange.

But it’s not the only thing that’s strange about this election, is it? A couple of days ago I was driving round Ayrshire and the south side of Glasgow and I saw, in total, I think two election posters; both of them were for the SNP, although one was so high up in a block of flats it might have been a trick of the light. The same applies to the candidates. I see them on Twitter holding up leaflets but I’ve never actually seen them on my street or anywhere else. Perhaps they only exist on social media. Perhaps they are two-dimensional candidates in a two-dimensional election.

The sense of unreality is underlined even more by how voters are behaving. Usually, I have at least two nice, big fall-outs with friends and relatives during an election or at the very least a ding-dong or two in which we call each other idiots. But this time: nothing. Barely a peep. How about you? Are you speaking to friends and family about the election? And if elections are mostly fought on Facebook, have you seen much of it? People seem to be talking mostly about vaccines ("have you had yours yet?") and Line of Duty ("do you know who did it yet?") In conversations, real and on social media, the election is nothing more than a ghostly presence.

Some of this is inevitable – we’re still seeing each other less than normal – but some of it is calculated too. In one of the most extraordinary incidents of the election so far, Nicola Sturgeon declined to appear on the Holyrood edition of Question Time. The SNP’s explanation was that the BBC had not included the show in its requests to the leaders, but all the other leaders showed up and in the past Sturgeon has always demanded her spot and criticised others for dodging theirs. Remember the fuss she made when Theresa May declined to appear on the debates in 2017?

It has to be said that May is a somewhat different kind of politician, obviously. Former Tory minister Alan Duncan’s recently published diaries expose a little more of what went on in 2017 and it’s clear that the real disaster was May’s feckless advisors and the decision to focus on the PM without actually saying anything. On June 3, 2017, Duncan writes of May: “She has looked wooden and defensive, like a frightened rabbit, declining interviews and TV debates. We have engaged in the politics of personality – without any personality.”

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You certainly couldn’t say the same about Sturgeon – she has political charisma and is an able performer – but her no-show at Question Time seems to be part of an emerging pattern. She didn’t perform well in the first leaders’ debate and she’s had a few rough interviews recently, particularly on the economic plan for independence (or lack thereof). Like May, the calculation now is that if you go into an election with high ratings, it’s best to do the minimum and avoid stepping on any landmines.

What this means for us is that this year’s election may end up being decided by what we don’t see rather than what we do. There were plans to put that ugly phrase “indyref2” on the ballot papers next to the word SNP, but they were quietly dropped. This was also supposed to be the election that would be a pseudo-referendum on independence, but the words “independence” and “referendum” have been minimised on the party literature. Combined with the lack of candidates and posters, and any meaningful engagement on social media, it’s led to this year feeling like the non-election election.

The question this raises is what the consequences might be. In 2017, Theresa May avoided the TV debates and stuck to pre-arranged soundbites and we know what happened next: Jeremy Corbyn looked pretty human by comparison and May was denied a “supermajority” (to borrow a popular phrase), and had to go into an arrangement with the DUP instead. What seems to have happened is that some voters responded to Corbyn and may have resented May’s apparent lack of engagement, although the other story was that, quietly, the Tory vote held up enough to secure May a win – not a very good win, but a win nonetheless.

I think something similar may happen for the SNP next month: not a very good win, but a win nonetheless. It’s interesting that the Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar has been judged the winner of the debates and that may be because voters are seeing him for the first time really and quite like him. But for an opposition to break through, you really need a sense of momentum, and momentum is hard to build in a non-election election. If the incumbent – Nicola Sturgeon – also starts to avoid head-to-head confrontations, you’re also denied important chances to score points against her and wound her.

This is the central calculation of the heads-down strategy for the SNP: play it steady, avoid opportunities for gaffes, and keep quiet about anything that’s controversial. However, as the 2017 general election proved, that may be enough to hold up the core vote but it’s unlikely to be enough to build support or create some kind of breakthrough. Sturgeon’s no-show on Question Time means her opponents lost an opportunity to wound her directly, but it also meant Sturgeon wasn’t there to put her case to the voters.

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The result of it all is likely to be a kind of holding pattern in which nothing much changes. An SNP advance would have required much more risk-taking and, if I was to predict the result of this non-election election, I’d say that they are likely to emerge exactly where they are now: just short of a majority.

The other risk, and it is by no means great, is that the play-it-safe, don’t-mention-indy campaign leaves some voters open to the unionist parties in the way some voters were open to Corbyn four years ago. But the effect will be marginal, no more. Much more likely is stasis. More of the same. In two weeks' time, I'm sorry to say, we're going to be pretty much where we are right now.

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