Tony Abbott won the Liberal leadership last December by just one vote on the back of his opposition to the government's emissions trading scheme (ETS).
But since then he's united the coalition behind him and reduced the Labour government to a shadow of its former self.
The government is now fighting for its political survival, desperately hoping it can retain power with the help of up to four independents and a Greens MP.
So how did it come to this? The answer is relatively simple. Abbott performed far better than anyone imagined as leader, while a panicked and disunited Labour party botched its re-election campaign.
Abbott won the right to lead the coalition to the 2010 election on December 1, 2009.
He defeated Malcolm Turnbull in a three-way vote that included opposition treasury spokesman Joe Hockey.
Almost no one - with the vocal exception of former Labour party speech-writer Bob Ellis - thought he could win.
But he did. Abbott moved to immediately reverse the opposition's support for Labour's ETS - Turnbull had done a deal with the government a week earlier - and established his "great big new tax" (GBNT) line of attack.
At the time, many commentators suggested Abbott would be unpopular in the electorate because of his muscular Catholicism.
AAP stated on the day Abbott took on the top job: "Labour's election strategists must be grinning from ear to ear - their job has just become a whole lot easier."
But Abbott, like a fighter who's got nothing to lose, came out swinging.
He set about simultaneously softening his image in the electorate while roughing up then prime minister Kevin Rudd in Canberra.
To woo women voters he shamelessly stole the Rudd government's plan to introduce a paid parental leave scheme - and made it more attractive.
In February, he declared a coalition government would deliver a better parental scheme than Labour's "Mickey Mouse" proposal.
Abbott hadn't run the idea past the shadow cabinet - a course of action that in the past had caused headaches for Turnbull - but his colleagues were happy to forgive him. The tide was beginning to turn.
Abbott was still hammering away with his "great big new tax" attack on the ETS.
And he'd started throwing in jabs - with the left on Labour's "incompetent" handling of the roof insulation scheme, and with the right on the school halls stimulus spend.
There was also a never-ending stream of hooks delivered in the form of one simple line: "We will stop the boats."
In April, Rudd punched himself in the face when he decided to shelve the ETS until at least 2013 out of a fear that Abbott's GBNT campaign was gaining traction.
The prime minister was down and while not out, he would never recover.
In May, he tried to revive flagging opinion poll numbers by announcing a new resources rent tax on the mining industry.
Labour had saved Australia from recession during the global financial crisis and was now going to "build a strong economy for the future", Rudd said.
Abbott immediately countered with a familiar refrain. The government was going to introduce a "great big new tax", he said, and the coalition would make sure it was front and centre of the upcoming election campaign.
Eight weeks later, Rudd was rolled by his previously loyal deputy, Julia Gillard.
Liberals started daring to dream of the impossible - an election victory less than three years after the Howard government was turfed out of office.
Gillard rushed into an election campaign straight away and Abbott - who in March completed his first ever ironman triathlon - declared he was up for the race of his life.
After a slow start, the Liberal leader campaigned his heart out.
He was here, there and everywhere. On the second last day, he campaigned right through the night, declaring "if you're running for a big job, you've got to make a big effort".
Many had expected Abbott to implode at some point during the five-week effort. He didn't.
There were some hiccups, however.
In week one, the opposition leader signed a mock death certificate for Work Choices, but then said he couldn't give "an absolute guarantee about every single aspect of workplace relations legislation".
In week three, he couldn't remember when the coalition would return the budget to surplus, despite it being point one in his "Action Contract" with the Australian people.
And in week four, Abbott was forced to admit he was no "tech head" when it came to broadband.
But none of the slip-ups was too serious, especially since Abbott had previously set the bar fairly high.
Back in May he said only his scripted remarks could be taken as "the gospel truth".
Abbott may have exceeded expectations as opposition leader, but on election day he wasn't quite capable of pulling off the remarkable victory he'd come to be "increasingly confident" of achieving.
Voters savaged Labour for flip-flopping on policy and leaders, but they weren't willing, when push came to shove, to fully embrace Abbott.
Instead, it seems Australians decided neither party deserved the win and instead delivered the first hung parliament since 1940.
AAP reg
