LONDON, May 18 (Reuters) - Turkey's lira weakened to a record low against the dollar on Thursday, after incumbent Tayyip Erdogan's lead in presidential elections surprised markets, while the nation's sovereign dollar bonds steadied after a three-day post-election rout.
The cost of insuring the country's debt against default fell slightly, but equity markets and banking stocks endured fresh losses in afternoon trading.
The lira weakened to a record low of 19.8050 to the dollar by 1904 GMT, bringing its losses since the election to more than 1%.
The 2045 bond gained close to one cent to trade at just over 70 cents on the dollar by 1300 GMT, Tradeweb data showed.
Credit default swaps, which measure the cost of insuring the country's debt against default, narrowed by 8 basis points (bps) by mid afternoon, to 684 bps, data from S&P Global Market Intelligence showed.