Sydney (Reuters) – On Saturday, Australians voted in a national election. A poll shows that the opposition Labor Party is just ahead of the ruling conservative coalition, but a strong showing by independents who care about the environment could lead to a hung parliament.
Centre-left After being in the opposition for nine years, Labor had a good lead going into the campaign. However, recent polls show that Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s Liberal-National government is closing the gap in the last few days of a tough six-week campaign.
The Australian newspaper’s Newspoll poll on election day showed that Labor’s lead over the ruling coalition had dropped by one point, to 53-47. This was mostly in line with other polls.
At 6 p.m., people will no longer be able to vote in person at schools in the suburbs, beach pavilions, and halls in the middle of nowhere (0800 GMT).
Morrison and the leader of the opposition, Anthony Albanese, voted late in the morning in Sydney after making a whirlwind tour of close seats in the last two days of a campaign that was mostly about rising living costs, climate change, and honesty.
Morrison told reporters outside the voting center, “Today, Australians are making a big decision about their future.” “Australia needs a leader who knows how to handle money, how to protect national security, how to move forward, and how to keep the economy strong.”
Albanese said that Australians want a new government because the current one isn’t “worth being proud of.”
“I’ve put us in a place where we can at least compete now.” “We’re on the lookout,” “Albanese said, about how likely he was to win the election.
He said he wanted to kick with the wind at his back in the fourth quarter, and “I think we have the wind at our back,” referring to one of Australia’s most popular sports, Australian Rules football.
While Labor focused on rising prices and slow wage growth, Morrison made the country’s lowest unemployment rate in almost 50 years the focus of his last few hours of campaigning. Since prices have gone up twice as fast as wages, real income has been going down.
Independents’ influence
Even though the economy is a big issue, a number of “teal independents” are running for key seats held by the Liberals. They are campaigning for action on climate change after some of Australia’s worst floods and fires.
Three volunteers working for teal independent Monique Ryan, who is running against Treasurer Josh Frydenberg in the long-held Liberal seat of Kooyong in Melbourne, said they joined Ryan’s campaign because they care about the climate for the sake of their children or grandchildren.
Charlotte Forwood, a working mother of three grown children, told Reuters, “This election actually makes me feel hopeful.”
In the last parliament, the Liberal-National coalition had 76 of the 151 seats in the lower house, while Labor had 68. There were also seven members from smaller parties or who were not affiliated with any party.
Voting is required, and the first results should be known by Saturday evening. However, the Australian Electoral Commission has warned that there may not be a clear winner right away if the race is close, because it will take time to count about 3 million postal votes.
The commission said that by Friday evening, more than half of the votes had already been cast, with a record 8 million early in-person and mail-in votes.
Because the east and west coasts are two hours apart, voting centers in Western Australia will still be open when the first counts start coming in from the east coast states, which have 124 of the 151 seats in the lower house.
