Federal election live: ‘Clear favourite’: Betting markets tip who will win

Albo and Dutton haven’t even hit the campaign trail, but betting agencies have already set a “clear favourite” as to who will be our next prime minister.

The election campaign is officially underway.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese left the Lodge just before 7am this morning to visit Governor-General Sam Mostyn to ask her to dissolve parliament.

The 47th parliament is now over and it’s a race to the polls on May 3 after a five-week election campaign, with breaks for Easter and Anzac Day.

Kicking off his campaign, Mr Albanese said the election would be a “choice between Labor’s plan to keep building or Peter Dutton’s promise to cut”. The opposition leader argued “we can’t afford three more years of Labor”.

Polls are tipping a likely minority government, meaning neither major party is able to win at least 76 seats of the total 150 in the House of Representatives.

Currently, Labor can only lose two of its current 78 seats if it wants to maintain a majority government, while the Coalition have an uphill battle to win 21 extra seats in order to govern outright.

But the betting markets have already picked a winner.

See below for highlights from the first day of the campiagn.

Originally published as Federal election live: ‘Clear favourite’: Betting markets tip who will win