Australia goes to the polls Saturday in general election

To take power after just one term in opposition, the center-left Labor Party led by Bill Shorten needs a swing of 19 lower house seats across the country, representing approximately 51 percent of the vote after preferences.

A Fairfax-Ipsos poll released on election eve predicts the Labor party could gain a two-party preferred swing of 3.5 percent, a result that, if uniform across the country, would deliver neither major party a majority and leave either needing to negotiate with minor parties and independents to form a minority government.

Opinion polls throughout the campaign predicted the coalition would return to power, but with a significant loss of the seats it took in the landslide 2013 election in which it garnered 53.5 percent of the two-party preferred vote.

The result of the election may come down to the outcome of just a few marginal seats in the eastern seaboard states of New South Wales and Queensland. Pundits predict the size of the likely swing to Labor in those states will determine the country's next prime minister.

It is the third-consecutive federal election called by a prime minister who came to power via a mid-term party-room coup.

The most recent leadership change came in September 2015 when Turnbull spilled the party leadership and ousted the deeply unpopular Tony Abbott, who had been in the top job for less than two years.

Just six months later, Turnbull called a double-dissolution poll, Australia's seventh, using a piece of rejected legislation aimed at instituting a construction industry watchdog as an election trigger.

The eight-week election campaign, the longest voters have had to endure since the 1960s, saw the nation's economic future, debt, and job creation as the hot-button campaign topics. But with little to separate the parties, rhetoric was ultimately the winner.

Both major parties launched full-fledged scare campaigns as polling showed the likelihood of a close-run result, the government appealing to its conservative base using the perceived threat of so-called refugee "boat people," while the opposition warned of a right-wing attack on Medicare, Australia's universal health care system.

One tangible policy difference between the parties that grew in importance late in the campaign was on the issue of marriage equality.

Turnbull, who is seen to represent the softer, less socially conservative side of the Liberals, promised to put the issue of gay marriage to a national plebiscite at the behest of the right wing of his party -- a faction that supports the former leader Abbott and remains deeply suspicious of Turnbull.
Shorten campaigned on the platform that he would pass legislation legalizing marriage between people of the same sex as his government's first order of business.

But as has been the case in most recent Australian elections, the perceived ability of the parties to manage the country's economy will likely be the clinching issue.

Labor, which unusually for an opposition party released extremely detailed costings, was shown to be planning larger budget deficits and a return to surplus later than the coalition, an outcome that may cost them their chance at winning the election.

Polling closes on Saturday at 6 p.m. across the country, and a result is expected later in the evening.

Source: Kyodo