The Australian national election is too close for comfort, according to polls released Wednesday. Australia’s ruling conservative coalition has narrowed its gap with main opposition Labor Party three days before the country elects a new government.

A poll for Sydney Morning Herald revealed that the lead of Centre-left Labor over Liberal-National has dropped to 51-49% from 54-46% just two weeks ago. According to a Guardian poll, Labor’s lead has dropped from 49%-45% to 48-46% two weeks ago.

Scott Morrison, the Prime Minister, described the pre-polling trends “really encouraging” while Labor admitted that it would be close.

Australia will be going to polls Saturday. Rising living costs dominated the campaign’s final stretch, with some polls indicating that it was the most pressing issue.

Australian wage growth grew only by a fraction in the last quarter of 2013, data from Wednesday revealed. However, a tightening labor market and record number of vacant jobs increased worker competition.

Consumer price inflation, however, has increased twice as quickly as wage inflation. Real income is still in the red.

Morrison spoke from Corangamite, an marginal Labor-held state in Victoria. He said that “I’ve been quite candid with Australians concerning the economic challenges facing us… Labor doesn’t have a magic bullet on these, they don’t have a magic pen or magic wand.”

Anthony Albanese (opposition leader) blames the government for the slow increase in wages, and also for the inflation shock.

Albanese stated that Australian workers have been paying for 10 years of economic and policy failures. Scott Morrison claims he should get another three years to be recognized because he’s just starting.

Official data revealed that nearly 6 million of the 17 million electorate have cast ballots via early-in-person or postal voting.

In comparison to the 2019, an additional 1.1million postal votes were received. If it’s a tight contest, the Electoral Commission may flag a winner as not being clear on election night due to the time needed to count all mail votes.