Australian PM faces tight race as opposition leads by slim margin in opinion poll

SYDNEY:

Australia

's national election has become too close to call, polls out on Wednesday showed, as the ruling conservative coalition narrowed the gap with the main opposition

Labor Party

, three days before the country decides on anew government.

Centre-left Labor’s lead over the Liberal-National coalition has shrunk to 51-49% on atwo-party preferred basis from 54-46% two weeks ago, a poll done for Sydney Morning Herald showed. A

Guardian

poll indicated Labor’s lead had dipped to 48-46% from 49%-45% two weeks ago. PM Scott

Morrison

described the pre-polling trends as “really encouraging”, while

Labor

acknowledged the election would be “incredibly close”. With Australia going to the polls on Saturday, rising living costs have dominated the final stretches of the campaign with voters rating it as the most critical issue in some polls.

Australian wage growth ticked up by only a fraction last quarter, data out on Wednesday showed, even as a tightening labour market and record vacancies heightened competition for workers. But consumer price inflation has risen twice as fast as wages, keeping real income in the red. “I’ve been very candid with Australians about the economic challenges we are facing . . . Labor has no magic bullet on this,” Morrison told reporters from the marginal Labor-held seat of Corangamite in Victoria. Opposition leader

Anthony Albanese

blamed government mismanagement for the slow rise in wages and inflation shock. “Australian workers are paying the price for a decade of bad policy and economic failures while Scott Morrison says he should be rewarded with another three years because he is just getting started,” Albanese said. Nearly 6 million voters out of an electorate of 17 million have already cast their ballots through postal votes or early in-person voting, official data showed. Another 1. 1 million postal votes have been received so far versus the 2019 polls. The

Electoral Commission

said a clear winner may not emerge on poll night if it is a close contest due to time needed to count all votes.