Rivals do battle in Australia's knife-edge election

Australians were choosing between two relatively unknown, but divergent personalities in a tight election race today, pitting the country’s first female prime minister against her socially conservative challenger just two months after she took power.

Welsh-born Julia Gillard, a 48-year-old former lawyer with a common law hairdresser spouse, came to power in an internal June 24 coup in her Labour Party during the first term of her predecessor, and almost immediately called an election to confirm her mandate.