Malcolm Turnbull remains admirably upbeat about his chances of forming a majority. Why? Perhaps he knows something the rest of us don't?

More likely though, it is a matter of political necessity, a marketing requirement arising directly from his percussive path to the leadership. In the old movie westerns, a gunslinger might say to an adversary: "If you're going to point that gun, you better be prepared to use it". The political version goes something like this: "If you're going to roll a sitting prime minister on the singular promise of winning an election, you better bloody well win it, and win it well!"

For this reason alone, Turnbull simply cannot afford to become even a perceived loser - especially during this dangerous pre-result period when his shell-shocked party is reeling from the political thrashing it's received all year from a Labor opposition that simply out-played it.

Turnbull's insistence now that sufficient seats will tumble his way to form a majority derives from the same place as his pre-election confidence of winning. His own survival. And it is a message to the colleagues.

Before the election, that confidence, we now know, was hideously misplaced. Worse, it bred a level of sloth and arrogance in the Coalition campaign that saw its messages fall flat and its excitement levels never get off the ground. Lazy policy work replaced proper detail leading to an election campaign eight weeks in its tawdry unfolding and yet without a single new policy announcement of substance.

Turnbull's shellshock on Saturday night at the cold repudiation of his hollow "jobs and growth" mantra and his lofty promise of stability, was such that he failed to even acknowledge the inherent legitimacy of voter reaction, and the personal cost of an ill-judged campaign strategy to loyal colleagues.

And it took him until Tuesday afternoon to say the things a leader should in those circumstances - to acknowledge the voters had sent the government a strong message of being unimpressed, unmoved, and most importantly, unnerved.

Conservatives and regional MPs had been grumbling since early on that the Turnbull rev-up, stressing the excitment of endless innovation, change, and the new economy, was going over badly with their constituents. There, they read it as more factory closures.

It was never heeded. But the seats lost, and those in doubt in regional old-industry strongholds like Tasmania, Townsville, Whyalla, and the outer-metropolitan suburbs of Western Sydney, wrote that electoral reaction in actual votes.

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