Labor easily wins South Australian election with One Nation beating Liberals into second on primary votes

For today’s South Australian state election, The Poll Bludger’s results^[1] have Labor winning 31 of the 47 lower house seats, the Liberals four, One Nation one and independents one, with ten still in some doubt. This is already a majority for Labor.

When doubtful seats are assigned to the most likely winner, Labor has 35 seats, One Nation four, the Liberals four and independents four. If this occurs, Labor would gain eight seats from the 2022 election^[2], which was already a thumping win for Labor, the Liberals would be down 12, One Nation up four and independents steady.

Primary votes are currently 37.8% Labor (down 1.9% in booth matched swing from the 2022 election), 20.8% One Nation (up 18.5%), 18.4% Liberals (down 16.9%), 12.0% Greens (up 1.9%) and 5.6% independents (up 2.9%). A Labor vs Liberal two-party estimate has Labor winning by 59.2–40.8, a 4.6% swing to Labor.

While SA Labor was a first-term government, a negative impact from a somewhat unpopular federal Labor government should have been expected. Labor’s landslide will be devastating for the Liberals.

While One Nation is beating the Liberals on primary votes by 3.4%, which of these parties wins the most seats is still to be determined.

The Poll Bludger’s results map^[3] currently shows only one Adelaide seat being won by a conservative party (Bragg by the Liberals). If Australia’s cities keep trending to the left, it will be very difficult for the right to win here.

Except for a late experimental Resolve poll that was conducted using AI, the polling for this election appears to have been accurate. It will be at least another week before we have final primary votes for the election.

There are many seats where the electoral commission selected the incorrect two candidates for its election night two candidate preferred. In these seats, the count will need to be realigned between the correct two candidates. This will probably occur early next week. One Nation’s surge meant that the old Labor vs Liberal two candidate selection no longer automatically applies.

The large number of pre-poll votes are unlikely to be counted until later tonight, with some not finished by the end of tonight. These votes may affect some results, but the overall Labor landslide will still occur.

I will update this article Sunday morning with more details on the results, including a look at the upper house. In the upper house, 11 of the 22 members were up by statewide proportional representation with preferences. A quota for election was one-twelfth of the vote or 8.3%.

I covered four SA polls in Friday’s article^[4]. In a further poll, Resolve conducted “a new experimental AI poll” of SA for Nine newspapers on March 16 from a sample of 1,112. This poll gave^[5] Labor 32% of the primary vote, One Nation 28%, the Liberals 18%, the Greens 10% and all Others 11%.

References

1. ^{^} The Poll Bludger’s results (www.pollbludger.net)
2. ^{^} 2022 election (en.wikipedia.org)
3. ^{^} Poll Bludger’s results map (www.pollbludger.net)
4. ^{^} Friday’s article (theconversation.com)
5. ^{^} This poll gave (www.theage.com.au)