Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of Australia has won a second term, completing a stunning turnaround for his governing center-left Labor Party that trailed in the polls for months as a festering cost-of-living crisis weighed on voters.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the country’s public broadcaster, called the election for Mr. Albanese just a half-hour after the last polls closed on Saturday.
It was a resounding defeat of the conservative opposition led by Peter Dutton, who had headed into the campaign riding dissatisfaction with the status quo, but was hamstrung by a string of campaign missteps and an association with some of President Trump’s messaging and policies.
ABC also projected that Mr. Dutton was on track to lose his seat in the conservative stronghold of Queensland, which he had held since 2001.
It was third major U.S. ally, after Germany and Canada, to hold elections since Mr. Trump’s second term began in January. Even though Mr. Trump did not figure as centrally in elections here as he did in Canada, the worldwide turmoil arising from his trade and diplomatic decisions weighed on Australian voters.
It remained to be seen whether Mr. Albanese’s party would hold on to its slim majority in Parliament. A record number of seats are held or are being closely challenged by independent and minor-party candidates, making it more likely that Mr. Albanese would need the support of smaller players to form a government.
The disaffection with the two major parties appeared particularly acute among younger people in an election where Gen Z and Millennial voters for the first time outnumbered baby boomers. Younger voters are defecting from the two leading parties because they feel little faith either have bold solutions for the challenges facing the country, said Intifar Chowdhury, a lecturer in government at Flinders University in Adelaide who focuses on youth political representation.
“These guys are kind of giving us little bites. Increasingly, it started to feel like band aids to a bullet wound,” she said. In giving Mr. Albanese a second term, she said, “you are choosing the known evil over the unknown evil.”
