A grim night for the Liberals in South Australia, who needing six seats to win have only clearly won two from Labor (Bright and Hartley) and one from an independent (Mount Gambier), and will require sharp late-count reversals to add any more than Mitchell to that list. Labor can yet get to a majority if they can hold on to Mitchell, but the most likely result seems to be a hung parliament with the two returned independents, Geoff Brock in Frome and Bob Such in Fisher, deciding the issue. Another loser of the evening is “electoral fairness”, with the Liberals weak showing coming despite what looks like a win of about 52.5-47.5 on two-party preferred. I’ll have a lot more to say about this of course, but not right now.
Oakshott Country @ 200: Uncontested seats were rare at the federal level after the 1950s.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say, although I’d loved to have seen the ALP and Greens win in SA, I think the Libs should be allowed to form government – 53% of the TPP should be respected. It annoyed me that howard ‘won’ the 1998 election with a TPP of 49% and that abbott did not respect PM Gillard’s majority TPP in 2009. I’m a left-leaning social democrat, but a democrat first and foremost. The LNP should form minority government in SA and be held to account. I predict labor would be back in power after one term, especially with the abbott factor. a clean sweep of the states could embolden abbott – which would be the death-knell for napthine, and potentially barnet and newman. The main worry is that I think the abbott faction would be happy to get rid of a relative moderate such as napthine so they can strengthen the grip of the real crazies on Vic (you know we’ve drifted into lunar orbits when the kennett faction is now the bleeding heart ‘wet’ faction of the libs). I think we’re going to go a long way backwards before we can go forward, but a crazy brave abbott with nobody to blame for holding him back is labor’s best show of a return to power federally in 2016 – provided abbott doesn’t use the royal commission into the unions as an excuse to essentially de-fund the ALP by restricting unions’ ability to donate members dues to political parties (& I think this is a real risk).
[The main worry is that I think the abbott faction would be happy to get rid of a relative moderate such as napthine]
Napthine is a conservative. Baillieu was a moderate.
Yes 63 was the last time there were more than 1 uncontested seat – a house alone election.
Frankly there are two reasons that all seats are now contested: 1. To maximise the senate vote by engaging party workers to give out HTV 2. A tidy profit can be made through vote based political funding in seats where the central party has a minimal spend.
However my point still stands we have pundits giving federal 2pp from 1930s onwards despite uncontested seats until the 50s
Napthine and Baillieau are factional allies and can be said to be part of the Kennett group of MPs.
However, since Kennett departed politics his acolytes today are more a ditherer faction than anything else.
Im a fan of MMP, and would support it anywhere. But advocates need to be careful with pointing to 2PP. It often means very little: a) some seats were won by bigger margins than others, and/or b) a whole lot of people on both sides of the equation were forced to express a residual preference for two parties they didnt vote for. There’s a reasonable case for “so what?” there in both cases.
What impresses me is the lack of return for primary votes in our system (eg most minor parties), or indeed, exaggerated returns for parties focussed in particular geographical areas (eg Nats).
If you also accept the strongest case for SMD (local members are good, representatives from your area) then MMP is a no-brainer. Top ups just reinforce major parties, rather than rewarding all votes by their value.
Does Finnigan ever turn up to vote in the Upper House or has Labor lost his vote or have the Libs paired him?
[Napthine and Baillieau are factional allies and can be said to be part of the Kennett group of MPs.]
Thanks for backing me on that GG. By the current LNP standards, Napthine is a wet (as is O’Farrell, Barnett, and the possibly new SA premier). It seems there are also Costello v Kroger factions – presumably they fight about who is the meanest, ultra-tory, heartless, arrogant,far-right-wing, uber-conservative arsehole. I’m guessing abbott is now in the kroger camp? (after all, Kroger is the biggest MUTHAFRWUCAH the party has after abbott himself).
[Napthine and Baillieau are factional allies and can be said to be part of the Kennett group of MPs.
However, since Kennett departed politics his acolytes today are more a ditherer faction than anything else.]
Napthine opposes same-sex marriage which perfectly demonstrates that he is a conservative bigoted wanker idiot moron.
[Does Finnigan ever turn up to vote in the Upper House or has Labor lost his vote or have the Libs paired him?]
His membership from the ALP has been suspended, which means he sits as an independent.
He attends parliament the minimum amount required so that he doesn’t get expelled.
SO
So has Labor in effect lost his vote?
[He attends parliament the minimum amount required so that he doesn’t get expelled.]
or if a primary school group is visiting parliament. (sorry)
If the Liberals had won those two seats that went to Independents they would have 24 and probably be forming government – the problem with the “top up” theory is that they would not “suffer” (electorally) for their inability to win these seats that they should have won.
Also the top-up system means that on election Saturday a locally unpopular candidate can narrowly lose a seat their party was expected to win easily, but then on Sunday they are “elected” as a top-up.
[SO
So has Labor in effect lost his vote?]
Not really because he effectively abstains all the time, so bills only need 11 votes to pass rather than 12.
He does come for really important votes, like the budget. He very rarely speaks in parliament. And when he does he normally stands up and just says how he is going to vote then sits back down.
Napthine is not moderate or wet like O’Farrell Napthine doen’t support gay marriage and also he did not vote for abortion reform unlike Baillieu who vote for it. Yes they may be in the group that becauase of past history with old Costello/Kroger faction. Napthine is old school vic country conservative very diffrent from Baillieu moderates
I must dissent from the view that the Libs should form government because they won the 2-party vote. The 2PV is an artefact of the electoral system. Labor makes no effort whatever to win votes in safe Liberal seats. It puts a candidate on the ballot paper only to get its base vote out to vote for its upper house candidates. In terms of winning government, campaigning to get the Labor vote in McKillop up from 12% to 20% is a waste of money and effort. It also makes very little difference whether Labor polls 55% or 60% in Ramsay, so not much campaigning is done there either, except by the sitting member. All that matters is winning votes in the marginal seats that Labor is either trying to win or trying not to lose. Labor’s “base vote” – people who will always vote Labor no matter what – is declining because of the changing nature of the workforce. That means that in seats where Labor doesn’t bother campaigning, either because they’re unwinnable or because they’re unloseable, the Labor vote is tending to decline. The only place the Labor vote is holding up is in the marginals, because that’s where Labor does all its campaigning. That’s why Labor can win approximately the same number of seats at successive elections while its statewide vote continues to decline. This is an artefact of the single-member seat system. Under that system, what matters is who wins the majority of the 2PV in the majority of seats. The statewide 2PV is a psephologist’s fetish (invented by Malcolm Mackerras, to be precise), not an actual political thing. As I’ve said before, it would be perfectly legitimate for Labor to contest only 24 seats if it was certain of winning them all. Then it could win the election with only 25% of the statewide 2PV, and that would be entirely “fair.” If we had a PR system, then a Labor vote in Bordertown would be as valuable as a Labor vote in Brighton, and Labor would chase them both with equal zeal. That would make a significant difference to the statewide outcome. But we don’t have PR. We have an election system with a set of rules. Both sides knew the rules at the start of the game. One side has (apparently) won and the other has (apparently) lost. That should be that. If the Libs want PR, they should say so and argue the case for it.
Paragraph’s Psephos, please 😉
I must dissent from the view that the Libs should form government because they won the 2-party vote. The 2PV is an artefact of the electoral system.
Labor makes no effort whatever to win votes in safe Liberal seats. It puts a candidate on the ballot paper only to get its base vote out to vote for its upper house candidates. In terms of winning government, campaigning to get the Labor vote in McKillop up from 12% to 20% is a waste of money and effort. It also makes very little difference whether Labor polls 55% or 60% in Ramsay, so not much campaigning is done there either, except by the sitting member.
All that matters is winning votes in the marginal seats that Labor is either trying to win or trying not to lose.
Labor’s “base vote” – people who will always vote Labor no matter what – is declining because of the changing nature of the workforce. That means that in seats where Labor doesn’t bother campaigning, either because they’re unwinnable or because they’re unloseable, the Labor vote is tending to decline.
The only place the Labor vote is holding up is in the marginals, because that’s where Labor does all its campaigning. That’s why Labor can win approximately the same number of seats at successive elections while its statewide vote continues to decline.
This is an artefact of the single-member seat system. Under that system, what matters is who wins the majority of the 2PV in the majority of seats. The statewide 2PV is a psephologist’s fetish (invented by Malcolm Mackerras, to be precise), not an actual political thing.
As I’ve said before, it would be perfectly legitimate for Labor to contest only 24 seats if it was certain of winning them all. Then it could win the election with only 25% of the statewide 2PV, and that would be entirely “fair.”
If we had a PR system, then a Labor vote in Bordertown would be as valuable as a Labor vote in Brighton, and Labor would chase them both with equal zeal. That would make a significant difference to the statewide outcome. But we don’t have PR.
We have an election system with a set of rules. Both sides knew the rules at the start of the game. One side has (apparently) won and the other has (apparently) lost. That should be that. If the Libs want PR, they should say so and argue the case for it.
216
There are also safe ALP seats that the Liberals do not campaign in.
It has been argued that it is political loyalty in general that is declining, not just the ALP vote.
The overall 2PP vote is not just of interest to psephologists but to anybody who wants to know which party most voters would prefer to be in government.
A vote for a party being worth more in one part of a jurisdiction than another part is inherently unfair. It leads to the type of deficit of democracy that malapportionment does. All votes should be equal.
Some really good points being made in this discussion, which has made me realise how much the statewide (or national) 2PP is a misleading artefact. It works OK on individual seats, but is misleading on a broader scale, as in SA. It is based on the assumption that everyone wants to support either Labor or Coalition, which is clearly not true – if we did we would give them our first preferences.
In some seats the actual contest is between a major party and an independent (as in the SA election) or between the ALP and the Greens (as several seats in inner Melbourne where I live). So obviously to add those seats in to an hypothetical statewide or national 2PP between the ALP and the Coalition is completely misleading. Thanks for the information.
Some voters have no idea about what any party stands for, they just do not care.
Why should their vote count as much as somebody who spends the time and effort to carefully decide who to vote based on the issues which the candidates differ?
The Liberals probably do a bit more campaigning in their safe seats than Labor do in theirs (partly because they can, partly because they need to), so there’s a bit of an asymmetry going on.
There’s the safe Libs seats in rich parts of capital cities: Manly and Pittwater in Sydney (and North Sydney federally); Alfred Cove, Churchlands and Nedlands in Perth; Fisher in Adelaide (plus any SA seat the Democrats used to do well in, like Heysen). Then there’s the country seats, vulnerable either to rural independents (Mt Gambier, Mildura, Tamworth, Northern Tablelands, Calare, Indi etc), the Nats in states without a Lib/Nat coalition (Flinders, Chaffey, pretty much any rural WA seat), or One Nation / KAP / etc in Qld.
Compared to all that, there’s not too many safe Labor seats that get lost. The Greens have only broken through in two seats (Fremantle and Balmain), and apart from a few exceptions in the Hunter / Illawarra in NSW or northern WA, or federal by-elections in Wills and Cunningham, safe Labor seats tend to stay put.
Psephos
For fairness I would prefer MMP as we have in Tasmania and the ACT, but where there are single member electorates, I would prefer the boundaries be as fair as possible.
We all agree that the US Gerrymanders are unfair, so surely an unintentional gerrymander as in SA is unfair too. Your statement that Labor these days basically only campaigns in marginal seats is correct, but that applies to the Libs as well, so it is not an argument against getting rid of the unintentional SA gerrymander.
It is also true that with a small chamber like the SA lower house, that you can’t guarantee that by redrawing the boundaries you can ensure that a party with 51% of the 2PP will get more seats than a party with 49% of the 2PP. But we should be able to ensure that a party with 53% of the 2PP gets more seats than a party with 47% of the seats. And if the latter does not happen I think the boundaries are unfair.
My second last sentence should finish
‘with 47% of the 2PP’
Graham Richardson in the Australian today put it very well.
‘To win on Saturday, the Liberals needed in excess of 54 per cent (of the 2PP). I can wear 51 per cent or even 52 per cent, but if you don’t win on 53 per cent or more the word gerrymander springs to mind’.
So the boundaries are an issue. Which doesn’t preclude other factors. Abbott did hurt the Liberals badly, because it is in the marginal seats that the pro-jobs anti-Abbott message cut through and so the swing against Labor in the marginal seats was less.
If there had been no significant independents, I am sure that the Liberals would have “won” this election by 24 seats to 23, from their 53-47 TPP. It is not Labor’s fault that the Liberals can’t beat independents in their own heartland.
In 1999 in Victoria the Coalition felt aggrieved about the result. After the Frankston East “supplementary” election (because an independent candidate died on the normal election day), Labor had 42 seats to the Coalition’s 43. Coalition figures then were saying that the Independents should back them because they had won more seats (but on that occasion conveniently ignoring the TPP which had Labor “ahead” 50.2 to 49.8). There were three Independents elected who eventually backed a Labor government. Again, it was not Labor’s fault that the Coalition lost these seats to Independents – it was clearly the “fault” of the voters in those electorates who did not prefer them.
Again, had there been no significant Independents I am sure that the Nationals would have won Mildura and Gippsland East, and that Labor would have won Gippsland West (though that may have been close). So then the Coalition would have had a clear-cut 45-43 win – and a majority on the floor of the House 44-43.
If that had happened, not too many Coalition figures would have complained about Labor losing the election but “winning” the TPP – probably about as many who complained about Kim Beazley not winning in 1998 with 51% TPP. (I am too young to remember how many of them complained about Labor losing the Federal Election with 50.03% of the PRIMARY vote in 1954)
Good morning Dawn Patrollers.
I will be in Canberra for the next two mornings so, with only an iPad – useless for creating stuff – on hand I will most likely be unable to post my Patrolllers’ Report.
This will be interesting. The devil will be in the detail.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tony-abbotts-war-on-red-tape-starts-with-repeal-day-20140316-34ve5.html
Michael Gordon reviews the latest Fairfax poll.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/tony-abbott-still-unpopular-with-voters-20140316-34vnh.html
Simple. Randall rorted.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/mp-don-randall-asked-finance-officials-if-he-could-charge-taxpayers-for-trip-20140316-34vn0.html
Religion? Pfffttt!
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/criticising-islam-gays-sets-army-major-up-for-a-fall-20140316-34va7.html
Sour grapes in large quantities at the Liberal Party.
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia-state-election-2014/liberals-call-for-changes-to-sas-electoral-laws-in-wake-of-state-election/story-fnl3k6uz-1226856125213
Anne Summers has some advice for Abbott on the subject of feminism.
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/tony-abbott-as-one-feminist-to-another-here-are-a-few-words-of-advice-20140316-34va9.html
Ross Gittins warns against abolishing the mining tax.
http://www.smh.com.au/business/ending-mining-tax-will-damage-jobs-20140316-34vh1.html
Alan Moir peers through Abbott’s intentions on health care.
Just in case you missed David Pope’s ripper on Saturday.
http://www.smh.com.au/photogallery/federal-politics/cartoons/david-pope-20120214-1t3j0.html
Matt Golding and Abbott’s Dreamtime.
http://www.smh.com.au/photogallery/federal-politics/matt-golding-20090907-fdh2.html
Pat Campbell looks at arts funding.
http://www.smh.com.au/photogallery/federal-politics/cartoons/pat-campbell-20120213-1t21q.html
SO CLEVER!! David Rowe at the Grand Prix with Jay Weatherill and the new car specifications.
http://www.afr.com/p/national/cartoon_gallery_david_rowe_1g8WHy9urgOIQrWQ0IrkdO
Sorry William – 226 copied to wrong page.
BTW, you did a great job on the ABC’s SA election coverage!
I’m with Psephos at 216/218 on this one.
Let the boundaries commissioners do their job again, as best they can.
I would expect some fairly radical adjustments to electorates by the time of the next election. It’s hard to say what they can do, due to the demographics of Adelaide. The metropolitan area itself is more homogenous, with Labor and Liberal voting pockets being more mixed.
This could, for example, see the abolition of some of the safe liberal seats such as Unley and Mayo, with their voters shifted to neighbouring Labor seats such as Ashford and Elder, to make them nominally Liberal. It’s far from an easy task.
MMP or Hare-Clark systems have an appeal, of the focus is on 2PP. But that’s a different debate. On the SA results, it would not result in majority government, which is a less likely outcome with traditional single member electorates.
Look, there are only 2 ways the Libs can win the next state election:
1. We return to the bad old days when electorates where smaller, giving more country electorates and therefore more Liberal seats – the pre-Steele Hall gerrymander; or
2. Sack the entire SA Liberal Party and bring in some new people who are either good candidates, good campaigners or both.
This election was lost by the Liberal Party, not by our electoral system. If you are in any doubt about that, read the Boundaries Commission report; it’s there in black and white. They pretty much admit the “fairness” provision can’t take into account crap campaigning, which is what happened to the Libs in 2010.
I confidently predict the 2016 report will say pretty much the same thing, which is the boundaries are as fair as they are ever going to be and the Libs need to lift their game if they want to win. End of story.
If it wasn’t for the boundaries commission, the Liberals would never have won Bright in the first place. The reason it became so marginal is because they felt Chloe Fox did “too well” in 2006.
The fact that the Liberals couldn’t pick up all those seats under a 5% margin is not the fault of the electoral commission. The fact is, the Liberals focused on seats like Hartley, Bright, Ashford and Elder for four years when they should have been focusing on seats higher up the pendulum like Reynell and Torrens. The reason the ALP have probably held Elder is because Conlon isn’t there anymore and the new ALP candidate already had some name recognition.
On top of that, their campaign strategy and communication was limp. They assumed the free media would do all the work for them without seeing what the ALP were doing beneath the surface.
In short: the Liberal Party simply don’t know what they’re doing in this state! They blew it! Next time, not only do they have the problem of the ALP’s campaign capacity in marginals, they also have to overcome the demographic change hurdle so they’ve made life even harder on themselves by not winning this time!
[This could, for example, see the abolition of some of the safe liberal seats such as Unley and Mayo, with their voters shifted to neighbouring Labor seats such as Ashford and Elder, to make them nominally Liberal. It’s far from an easy task.]
Mayo is a federal seat.
Also, you can’t just “abolish” seats willy nilly; we’re talking about 20,000 voters that need to be redistributed. Given they can’t all be dumped in one electorate, that’s one mighty task, because every shift from electorate to electorate has a continuing knock-on effect.
Using your example, if you take 3 booths out of Unley and put them into Adelaide, you then have to look at what you’re going to take out of Adelaide and where you’ll put them. If you put them in Enfield, you have to put Enfield voters somewhere … etc.
It’s one of those “careful what you wish for” scenarios. And if you make more marginal seats across the state then that’s going to make the situation worse for the Liberal Party, given marginal seat campaigning’s their very problem …
Danny! Mea culpa. I was thinking Heysen. Probably add Davenport too as being in line for the chop.
If you asked, say, the Victorian Liberals what they would do if the next election there ended up as, say, 43 Liberal, 41 Labor, 4 Green (not that I think this is anything like what will happen) from a statewide two-party-preferred of 48-52, I’m quite sure they would say they had won the election and had a right to attempt (futilely, admittedly) to form government with interlopers in seats Labor would have won 2PP counts in.
Sorry Danny. At 231, I understand exactly what you are saying. It’s exactly the problem the redistribution commission tried to tackle after the last election. Compounding the problem in Adelaide is the general proximity of conservative voting near rural areas with conservative leaning (or safe) seats such as Bragg and Waite. It’s no easy task.
Where the electoral commission ended up last time was with boundaries that gave both sides a fair chance of winning. The fact that the Liberals could not win seats such as Elder, Ashford, Colton and Light is the reason they didn’t win government, to state the obvious.
The SA Liberals need to look long and hard at their efforts, and those of their candidates, in those four seats. If all had fallen to the Liberals, the statewide 2PP would barely move, yet the composition of the House would be a comfortable Liberal majority.
But I expect the redistribution will be more radical next time. I’m not sure how it will pan out, but I would foresee at least one of the safe Liberal near rural seats being replaced with another metropolitan seat, to allow for more tinkering with metropolitan boundaries and creating more metropolitan seats with nominal Liberal margins.
My general point is that the redistribution task is especially difficult in Adelaide because of the peculiarities of its demographic spread. Under the single member electorate system, Labor SA has had consistent success in winning the key metropolitan marginals, with a skewing of the statewide 2PP partly for the reasons Psephos has stated.
You could create a single member system that made victory on 50% 2PP very likley if American style boundary manipulation was adopted you could have Adelaide northern suburbs & Renmark in same electorate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois%27s_4th_congressional_district
I’m with Psephos too.
Moreover, the constitutional requirement that the ECSA draw boundaries that ensure the party with the highest 2PP count wins the most seats is a dog. ECSA simply cannot do this — even under MMPR they can ensure this type of outcome only with high probability, but it is never a sure thing — unless full PR across the state is implemented. Well done to whoever drafted an impossible target for them.
Gerrymandering is the deliberate drawing of electoral boundaries to create a desired political outcome. SA does indeed have gerrymandering, because the “fairness” provision requires it. At two successive elections additional Liberal voters were put into Bright with the deliberate intention of causing Chloe Fox to lose her seat, because the “fairness” provision requires that the Libs be given seats that they were incapable of winning by their own efforts. This kind of boundary-rigging is pernicious and open to corruption, but it is required by the “fairness” provision.
Its patently false to claim the ALP won because of superior marginal seat campaigning. They lost 2 or 3 seats which is just as what was to be expected according to the pendelum.
What they did do, was hold enough marginal seats to hold government…but the problem is the marginal seats are not representative of the overall state vote but are clustered around the 53 – 55% statewate 2PP mark.
MARGINAL ALP SEAT SWINGS
http://www.abc.net.au/news/sa-election-2014/results/electorates/
-0.8% swing overall against ALP
Ashford +1.9%
Bright -2.9%
Colton -2.0%
Elder +0.4%
Florey +0.1%
Hartley -1.5%
Lee -2.8%
Light -0.5%
Mawson +1.6%
Mitchell -3.2%
Newland -0.9%
Torrens -4.5%
Wright -1.3%
Psephos – Baldrick has handed me a “cunning plan” for the Liberals to win in South Australia –
They should “tank” in all metropolitan marginals, and campaign really hard in the safe metro and rural seats. Then under the provisions of the Act, they will have been seen to have been “hard done by” for the TPP they achieved, leading to a massive redrawing of electoral boundaries so that they can then win next time.
Oh, wait, this is what they’ve done in the last two elections isn’t it?
The ALP has 36% of the vote. I remember in the 80’s there was such a fuss about Joh winning outright with 39% of the vote in 1983 & 1886. This when the Liberal party also recieved 50-20% and was feeding him preferences, meaning he was comfortably winning the 2PP.
Now the ALP will win SA with 36% and heavily lose the 2PP and thats just fine for many ALP partisans!
15-20%
Yes, it is true that Bjelke-Petersen never actually lost an election on the 2PP. The main effect of the Qld malapportionment was to benefit the Nats against the Libs. Nevertheless there WAS a deliberate malapportionment in Qld and it DID disadvantage Labor.
There is no malapportionment in SA, and such gerrymandering as there is benefits the Libs, as I just noted. It’s just that the Libs can’t win the seats they need to win a majority.
Another SA “fairness” gerrymander is the splitting of Port Augusta and Port Pirie. On community of interest grounds they ought to form one seat, which Labor would usually win. Instead they are split between Stuart and Frome, which Labor can never win.
My personal view is that a party shouldn’t win majority Government on 36% of the vote, nor should they win on anything less than 50% of the vote. That’s an argument for PR, however and not arbitrary tinkering with electoral boundaries to try and manufacture a result the electoral system doesn’t ask for.
Actually, perversely perhaps, the QLD malaportionment (not gerrymander) probably balanced things out. The second election after it was removed (1995) the ALP held on with only 46.5% of the 2PP, surely a low for a winning party in at least the last 40 years. In 2009 they won a 20 seat majority with just 50.5% so it might not be a one off. Seems this demographic bias is not restricted to SA, just that SA is the only state that has introduced a mechanism to counter it – one that was unfortunately ignored by the Boundaries Commission.
[one that was unfortunately ignored by the Boundaries Commission.]
Because the Act requires them to do something that is impossible, namely predict how people will vote at a future election.
Something similar happened in the 1993 federal redistribution in NSW. The Act required that all seats be within 10% of equal enrolment, and that they still be within 10% in six years’ time (or something like that). The NSW Commissioners noted in their report that this was impossible, so they ignored the requirement.
Interesting debate.
The first point that should be made, of course, is that the Libs didn’t not win 53% of anything. They won around 45% of the primary vote. There are three seats in which the electoral commission has not distributed any 2PP preferences to Labor. Don’t we want to see the outcome in these seats before we conclude anything?
Secondly, as Psephos says, the SA lower house is based on individual electorates. If the Libs can’t win 24 individual electorates, then they lose. It’s a bit like a team being undefeated in the minor premiership, and then losing the Grand Final: they aren’t the premiers, because that’s not decided on the basis of home and away.
The first time I ever set eyes on Steven Marshall was during the election night coverage. If he’s the best the Libs can come up with in terms of a potential Premier against the smooth and intelligent Weatherill, the only surprise is that they came as close to winning as they did.
Campaigning aggressively against the independents also wasn’t a very good idea in retrospect, was it?
It’s arguably time for a change in SA, but who really wants to see this bunch of Libs running anything?