(Updates with 50% of votes already cast in par 3)
By Kirsty Needham
SYDNEY, May 20 (Reuters) - Prime Minister Scott Morrison crisscrossed Australia in a final day of campaigning, insisting he could still win Saturday's election despite polls pointing to a change of government or hung parliament.
Morrison and Labor opposition leader Anthony Albanese targeted marginal seats across four states in the last 48 hours of the six-week campaign as data showing wages growth being outstripped by inflation and record low unemployment gave fodder for competing claims on who would best manage the economy.
More than half the votes had already been cast by Friday evening in the compulsory voting system, with a record 8 million pre-poll and postal votes, the Australian Electoral Commission said.
An Ipsos opinion poll published by the Australian Financial Review showed Labor leading Morrison's ruling Liberal-National coalition 53% to 47% on a two-party preferred basis, where votes are ranked by preference and distributed to the top two candidates.
But Labor's primary vote shrunk to 36% to the coalition's 35%, with minor parties and independents attracting nearly a third of voters, raising the prospect of a minority government.
Morrison, in a blitz of media interviews on Friday, said he could still win, and pointed to his economic competence.
"What I've demonstrated over these last three years - not everybody's agreed with me... and not everybody likes me - but that's not the point. The point is, who can manage the nation's finances to keep downward pressure on rising interest rates, downward pressure on cost of living?" he said on ABC News Breakfast, before campaigning in Western Australia.
Albanese campaigned with former Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard in the South Australian capital of Adelaide, broadening his attack to the government's record on gender equality and climate change, issues championed by independent candidates.
Gillard, Australia's first woman prime minister and an international campaigner for women's leadership, urged women to vote Labor, saying, "I am very confident it will be a government for women."
In 2010, after the election delivered a hung parliament, Gillard formed a government after extended negotiations with independents and minor parties.
Several so-called "teal independents" are challenging key Liberal-held seats, campaigning for action on climate change after some of Australia's worst floods and fires, and criticising the government on integrity and equality.