Tight Australia election shows ruling coalition in peril

CANBERRA, Australia — Australia’s era of political chaos continued Saturday, with a general election failing to deliver an immediate victor and raising the prospect of a hung parliament.

Hours after the polls closed, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull sounded a confident tone despite early results showing his conservative Liberal Party-led coalition in a virtual tie with the opposition center-left Labor Party.

“Based on the advice I have from the party officials, we can have every confidence that we will form a coalition majority government in the next parliament,” Turnbull said in a speech to cheering supporters early Sunday morning.

Parties need to hold at least 76 seats in the 150-seat House of Representatives to form a government. As of early Sunday, the Australian Electoral Commission said Labor was leading in 70 seats, Turnbull’s coalition in 68 seats, and minor parties or independents in five seats. Counting was less clear in another seven seats.

The final tally was not expected to be known until Tuesday, after mail-in ballots and those cast ahead of Saturday’s election were counted.

Just two possibilities remain: The coalition will win by the slimmest of margins, or there will be a hung parliament.

Turnbull called the rare early election — dubbed a “double dissolution” because both the House and the Senate are dissolved — in a bid to break a legislative deadlock over a bill that would have created a construction industry watchdog. But the result of the election may bring further deadlock: If neither party earns a majority of seats in the House, both Labor and the coalition will be forced to try to forge alliances with independent lawmakers to form a minority government.

Hung parliaments are rare in Australia, with only two since 1940.

Saturday’s elections continue an extraordinarily volatile period in the nation’s politics, where internal party squabbling and fears over sagging poll ratings have prompted five changes of prime minister in as many years.