Mr Palmer looks set to break all records in terms of advertising dollars spent in the lead-up to any Australian election, with estimates ranging as high as $70 million.

For all that, though, and for all his bluster, he appears likely to win just one seat in Canberra when it's all said and done - a seat for himself in the Senate.

But opinion polling shows his candidates could draw as much as 10 per cent of the vote in some electorates - more than enough for preferences from those candidates to decide the winner in some marginal seats.

So it makes sense for both sides to have courted his preferences (as Mr Palmer claims to have been the case, though the Labor Party rejects the claim), just as it makes sense for Mr Palmer to have decided to send his party's preferences the way of the Coalition.

Mr Palmer himself is a former life member of the Liberal National Party in Queensland and his candidates across the nation certainly lean more to the conservative side of politics.

So it should come as no surprise, at least from a pragmatic point of view, for Prime Minister Scott Morrison to do a deal with Mr Palmer to preference Coalition candidates second on his how to vote cards.

It's not a deal done to get more UAP candidates into parliament, it's a deal designed to get more Coalition candidates into parliament. What other course of action could the leader of the Liberal Party take?

At the same time, the nature of politics demands that opposition leader Bill Shorten come out strongly in criticising the deal, slamming the Coalition for abandoning all sense of principle in a naked bid for power while also highlighting Mr Palmer's chequered history with regard to workers' rights. What other course of action could the leader of the Labor Party take?

Both sides of politics have acted exactly as we should have expected and neither has a monopoly on the moral high ground.

The preferential voting system at the federal election - as opposed to optional preferential at a state level - means every vote will count on May 18 and that means every vote is worth pursuing.

And if that means doing a deal with Clive Palmer, then so be it.