The Australian Electoral Commission hopes to be in a position to announce the first official results of the federal election early next week, with vote counting continuing over the weekend.
One week on from the national poll, the commission said a number of the 151 House of Representative seats will require a full distribution of preferences before a result can be declared.
The complex Senate vote count also remains in full swing.
"The mammoth task of capturing, confirming, manually entering and then validating the 100 million plus preferences marked on Senate ballot papers has been progressing smoothly," the AEC said in a statement on Saturday.
"More than 1.4 million Senate ballot papers have been scanned since central Senate scrutiny processes began on Wednesday."
At 1845 AEST on Saturday, two lower house seats were deemed too close to call, with a third, the Tasmanian seat of Bass, swinging in and out of the "in doubt" list through the day.
With almost 92 per cent of votes counted in Bass, Liberal candidate Bridget Archer has a lead of 690 votes over Labor incumbent Ross Hart on a two-candidate preferred basis after enjoying a 5.93 per cent swing.
The Liberals' Sarah Richards is just ahead of another Labor incumbent Susan Templeman in the NSW seat of Macquarie, with the AEC website showing a slim 46 vote gap after 88 per cent of votes were counted.
Labor candidate Anika Wells, who is seeking to replace retired former treasurer Wayne Swan in the Brisbane seat of Lilley, is ahead of her Liberal National Party rival Brad Carswell by a margin of 901 votes, although only 86 per cent of votes have been counted.
The AEC now has the Liberal-National coalition with a two-seat majority of 77 seats, and the potential of 78 in total.
Labor has 66 seats, with the possibility of 67, and there are six crossbenchers.
In the upper house, the coalition looks set to control 34 or 35 seats after the half Senate election, still short of 39 seats needed for a majority.
However, it will likely have to deal with a smaller crossbench of six senators to pass new laws, rather than the 10 that will exist until the present Senate ends on June 30.
Australian Associated Press
