Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison looks set to form a majority government after vote counting from the country's election showed pollsters had wrongly predicted an opposition victory
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison speaks to the media as he arrives at the Horizon Church in Sutherland in Sydney, Australia, May 19, 2019.
With 76 seats in the House of Representatives needed for majority rule, figures from the Australian Electoral Commission on Monday showed 84 percent of the votes had been counted, with the coalition on target to win 77 seats — an increase of four after going into the election as a minority government.
Australia's benchmark ASX 200 index was up 1.7 percent in late-afternoon trading — reaching its highest level since 2007, just before the global financial crisis. Morrison had become Australia's sixth prime minister in only eight years. Four such changes had been brought about by lawmakers voting to dump their party's leader, two each from the coalition and the center-left Labor Party.
Most late surveys showed Labor leader Bill Shorten as having a small but clear lead over Morrison as preferred prime minister, with 51 percent to 49 percent.
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