Sydney, Aug 21 (IANS) The final result of the neck-and-neck electoral battle in Australia hinges on the two million postal votes that will be counted after 13 days of polling, which is under way Saturday.
About 85 percent of all voters are expected to cast ‘ordinary’ ballots, the counting of which starts and is expected to be completed Saturday night.
But with 440,000 additional voters on the roll, the election commission says the counting of ‘ordinary’ ballots may continue till Sunday. Counting starts at 6 p.m. Saturday in 7,700 polling places across the country.
However, as per the Australian electoral law, the count of postal votes cannot be finalised until 13 days after the polling day.
Since the number of early and postal votes in the ongoing general elections is around 460,000 more than that of 2007 elections the outcome may not be known until two weeks, according to The Age.
Opinion polls carried out by various organisations have predicted the closest contest between Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s Labor Party and the Opposition Liberal Party candidate Tony Abbott.
By Thursday, more than two million Australians had cast early ballots or requested postal votes, representing more than 14 percent of those enrolled to vote.
Due to changes in electoral laws made this year, early votes cast in the constituency in which the person is enrolled will be counted on election night. But the electoral commission will not begin counting pre-poll votes cast outside the voter’s constituency, and postal votes, until Sunday.
Adding further uncertainty, almost 100,000 extra people can vote because the activist group GetUp successfully challenged in the high court the Howard-era electoral laws midway during the campaign.
In 12 of the most marginal constituencies – called electorates in Australia – the number of these additional voters exceeds the notional margin of the seat.
An extensive Nielsen poll in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald puts Labor just ahead on 52 points to the opposition coalition’s 48. An updated Newspoll in The Australian newspaper has the major parties locked at 50-50.
Meanwhile, Abbott appeared confident about the election, saying they would be ‘finishing strongly’.
The opposition leader voted in his northern Sydney seat of Warringah Saturday morning and Gillard is flying to Melbourne to vote in her western Melbourne seat of Lalor.
The conservatives need 17 Labor seats to win the election by garnering a uniform swing of 2.3 percent across the country. But the government can lose its absolute majority if it loses 13 seats.
