With four days to go until polling day, Fox & Hedgehog has the first South Australian state poll in nearly three weeks, and it suggests the campaign period has if anything widened One Nation’s lead over the Liberals, while doing little to dent Labor’s ascendancy. Labor is on 38% of the primary vote, down two on the last Fox & Hedgehog poll in early February, with One Nation up one to 21%, the Liberals down one to 18% and the Greens down one to 11%. Two-party preferred measures have Labor’s leads narrowing from 63-37 to 59-41 against One Nation and from 61-39 to 60-40 against the Liberals, with the Liberal lead over One Nation unchanged at 53-47. A three-party preferred measure has Labor down two to 52%, One Nation up one to 26% and Liberal up one to 22%. The poll was conducted March 6 to 16 from a sample of 1008.
The breakdowns include regional classifications of inner Adelaide, outer Adelaide and regional South Australia. With due regard to the small sample sizes, their results can be summarised as follows:
• The primary votes in inner Adelaide are Labor 45%, unchanged on 2022, while the Liberal vote is halved to 19%, with the Greens little changed on 13% and One Nation eclipsing them even here with 15%. This pans out to a Labor two-party lead over the Liberals of 65-35, for a swing of about 7.5%. That would be comfortably enough for Labor to win Unley (2.2%), Hartley (3.6%), Morphett (4.5%) and Colton (4.8%), but not quite Bragg (8.2%).
• The results for outer Adelaide are Labor 44%, up two to three points from 2022, Liberal 12%, down nearly 20, Greens 11%, up about two, and One Nation 20%, with Labor given a 66-34 lead over the Liberals, a swing of nearly 6%. The only seat the Liberals hold here is Morialta, where the margin is 1.4%. Presumably the strength of the Labor primary vote would fortify them against any threat from One Nation.
• One Nation leads the field in regional South Australia with 28% of the primary vote, with Labor on 22%, down about five on 2022, Liberal on 25%, down about 12, and the Greens on 8%, with others at 17%, much of it presumably going to independent incumbents. This would be unevenly distributed, but it surely suggests One Nation is unlikely to emerge empty-handed. Its strongest prospects are presumably Flinders, MacKillop, Chaffey, Narungga and Mount Gambier, which would raise the prospect of official opposition status. The Liberals are nonetheless credited with regional two-party leads of 51-49 over One Nation and 53-47 over Labor, the latter pointing to an adverse swing of 9% that presumably doesn’t bode well for them in Kavel.
Leadership ratings put Peter Malinauskas’s approval at an unchanged 52%, with his neutral rating up four to 26% and negative down two to 19%. Ashton Hurn is respectively up five to 25%, down one to 36% and up two to 15%, with 24% now never having heard of her, down six. Malinauskas’s lead as preferred premier is barely changed, out from 54-22 to 55-22. One fly in the One Nation ointment is that lead upper house candidate Cory Bernardi’s net rating is down from minus four to minus nine: down one on approval to 14%, up two on neutral to 37% and up four on disapproval to 23%.
“ T & H are close to each other, and the next 3 letters are urn.
Of course that can be an autocorrect problem.”
Yeah or you could just be posting propaganda from head office without looking at what you’d said.
One benefit of an enlarged Labor caucus is a bigger talent pool from which to draw the new Ministry. The health portfolio is the greatest challenge for the next term of Government, so Mali needs to appoint a new health Minister with determination to implement the long term structural solutions that fixing these problems requires. Labor will go into it’s next term with huge political capital – and let’s hope it uses it wisely. And also hope that it listens to the right people who can help it develop the solutions to the health problems – there may be a job for you there somewhere Diogenes!
“Yeah or you could just be posting propaganda from head office without looking at what you’d said.”
Why would head office put the wrong person’s name in their propaganda?
Upper house looks like a solid 6-5 to the left if this poll is anywhere close to correct – I can’t find a way to torture the numbers into anything else.
In quotas: ALP 4.56, ON 2.48, Lib 2.16, Grn 1.32, others 1.44. That’s 5-4 to the left straight off the bat, so they only need one more from the last two seats. If the “others” vote scatters all over the place or exhausts, ALP #5 and ON #3 win; if it condenses around some minor right candidate (the two competing Family Firsts, etc etc), they’re competing with ON #3 and they can’t both win. Same applies to any minor left candidate (Green #2, AJP, Franks) vs ALP #5.
Also, working off their 3cp (52-26-22), that gives ALP 6.24, ON 3.12, Lib 2.64. Pretty hard to magic up a situation where that isn’t six seats for the left without massive leakage from the Greens.
Can’t imagine Labor’s upper house vote will be as large as the one in the lower house will be, hopefully some Labor voters will look to keep the bastards, their own party, honest
Nine Entertainment (SMH) is running this story – not paywalled:
If the statewide two party preferred number ends up actually getting to above 60% like the polls are suggesting then that would be quite extraordinary. Normally even in a landslide the vote total overall is usually still at a margin that is considered ‘marginal’. It’s very rare that you have a ‘safe’ margin of victory (over 10% margin) in the overall vote total across the whole election.
Over 204,000 early votes in now. Now it’s starting to look like a decent total.
While that article is a bit of a puff piece, the threat of One Nation should not be ignored, especially in the regional seats. I’ve heard from someone who lives on the Yorke Peninsula that their local ON candidate has been holding regular community events and talking to voters. They’re not just names on ballots trying to lazily coast in on the party’s (or Hanson’s) name. They’re very much coordinating and communicating to the real grievances that people are having.
And no it’s not just “Boy I hate queers, darkies and foreigners, don’t you?”, the person I spoke to said the biggest issue that is causing anger out their way is the unreliability of electrical power out that way. The Yorke Peninsula apparently has suffered quite a few significant blackouts recently and that is a problem, especially to farmers and what not. Now, the cause is related to transmission issues – power transmission in the country is dire but the One Nation candidate is happy to weave that in to more broader grievances towards the “out-of-touch” elite political class.
While there is a lot of validity to some of their grievances, it unfortunately gets channeled into anti-intellectual, reactionary thinking that doesn’t solve (sometimes exacerbates) the problem and just empowers the worst people. One Nation offers something simple and most importantly they feel they’re heard.
I am worried that Labor might get a couple of nasty “One Nation” surprises in previously safe seats North and South. I am thinking seats like Light, Reynell, Kaurna and Taylor. With Liberal preferences going to ON, any softening of Labor’s primary vote could put it at risk.
I think Labor’s support will probably be strong enough to resist any challenge in their seats this time but the bigger fear is One Nation parking themselves as the viable alternative and, when Labor is less popular, that’s when they start cleaning up. Especially as I think a lot of the Liberal Party base would actually have no problems supporting them if it came to it. Really it depends on how strong the “Anybody but One Nation” (aka what I call the “LePen Effect”) voter mass is. (Of course, the next election is four years away and who knows what things will be like then.)
However, I do think if One Nation have a good showing in a lot of working class and outer suburban seats, it is a potentially scary portent for what might happen in Victoria later in the year (where their Labor Government currently doesn’t still enjoy strong support.)
And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention there was also a lot of this kind of rhetoric about seats falling everywhere back when Xenophon was dipping his toe into running for lower house seats, so it might not be such a bloodbath. I dunno. That’s what makes this election intriguing – rather than the traditional question of who is elected to government, which is more or less a foregone conclusion.
Wat:
I agree with you on One Nation.
New poll from YouGov unchanged. Lib 19 ON 22 Lab 38.
Overwhelmingly ON voters said they were voting ON because they felt the majors didn’t represent them any more. Almost none said policy.
I suspect there are important national lessons from the real poll.
The ON vote is of real concern. The libs have been taken over by a hard right Christian cartel. The federal libs under Dutton allowed people to embrace their underlying racism and misogyny.
This groundswell of support is a backlash against societal developments since the 60s. It is the resurgence of the middle aged balding white man who longs for the world he thinks his father enjoyed.
Really it’s just racism and bitter jealousy of a world that has moved on.
The irony is these are the very same people who have received all the benefits of the society they resent.
You vote Pauline, admit you’re a selfish racist sexist gronk, even if only in the privacy of the polling booth.
Mali will romp home. The only question is who or what the opposition will be.
My beloved Greens will take a hit as disaffected lefties will hold their nose and vote for the ALP.
The continuous ON and LNP hagiographies in the MsM will have been for nought.
Mali will be re-elected in a landslide. Thank dog. The alternative is unthinkable. We don’t need to voluntarily open the gates of fascism.
MAB
Another concerning thing is the possibility of a shy ON effect.
Sky News reporting a YouGov poll with a very similar result: Skynews.com.au/australia-news/politics/bombshell-poll-shows-one-nation-leading-liberal-party-in-south-australia-ahead-of-state-election/news-story/11d1e53df014146239c848020567748c
>Bird of paradoxsays:
>Wednesday, March 18, 2026 at 2:26 am
>Upper house looks like a solid 6-5 to the left if this poll is anywhere close to correct – I can’t find a way to torture the numbers into anything else.
>That’s 5-4 to the left straight off the bat, so they only need one more from the last two seats.
after the full quotas
Others 1.44.
ALP 0.56,
ON 0.48,
Grn 0.32,
Lib 0.16
Is their a small chance the Grn #2 could overtake ON #3 for the final seat along with the ALP #5? (for a 7-4 result)
Final House of Assembly Prediction:
ALP: 34 seats
– Hartley: 0.8%
– Black: 1.8%
– Unley: 1.8%
– Morialta: 2.4%
– Hammond: 2.4% vs PHON
– Ngadjuri: 2.7% vs PHON
– Dunstan: 3.8%
– Gibson: 6.8%
– Waite: 7.9%
– Davenport: 8.5%
– Newland: 9.6%
– Elder: 11.2%
– King: 11.2%
– Adelaide: 12.6%
– Torrens: 13.1%
– Lee: 15.7%
– Wright: 16%
– Badcoe: 18.8%
– Enfield: 19%
– Florey: 19.4%
– Hurtle Vale: 20.4%
– Reynell: 22.5%
– West Torrens: 23.7%
– Giles: 24.4% vs PHON
– Playford: 24.5%
– Ramsay: 24.7%
– Cheltenham: 24.8%
– Light: 25%
– Kaurna: 25%
– Taylor: 25.1%
– Elizabeth 25.1% vs PHON
– Mawson 25.5%
– Port Adelaide: 25.6%
– Croydon: 28.2%
LIB: 3 seats
– Morphett: 0.1%
– Colton: 0.4%
– Bragg: 2.7%
PHON: 3 seats
– Chaffey: 2.7% vs LIB
– Schubert: 3.2% vs ALP
– McKillop: 6.4% vs LIB
GRN: 1 seat
– Heysen: 1.4% vs LIB
IND: 6 seats
– Flinders: 3.2% vs LIB
– Finniss: 6.4% vs PHON
– Mt. Gambier: 11.2% vs PHON
– Narungga: 11.6% vs LIB
– Kavel: 19% vs LIB
– Stuart: 28% vs LIB
Just voted. Safe ALP seat. Lots of people taking ON how to vote cards. The bloke handing them out was the sort of working class guy who you’d expect to see handing out Labor HTV cards in the past. But it won’t change the result, labor will win this seat easily.
Catprog: I doubt it, for the same reason 5-6 isn’t likely. On those partial quotas, ALP+Grn is less than 1, so pretty much all of the “others” would need to go to them to get both seats. Reality is, a lot of it’s gonna be non-One Nation minor right. Not impossible, but pretty unlikely.
TBM
If One Nation scabs Ashton Hurn’s seat of Schubert it will not only a travesty, but an insult! I am a Labor voter but am inclined to vote for Hurn to keep Hanson’s intellectually devoid, ragtag mob out.
Is there really a chance that Schubert could go to ON?
The swing will be there if they’re going to get about 23% of the vote statewide.
>Bird of paradoxsays:
>Wednesday, March 18, 2026 at 4:38 pm
>Catprog: I doubt it, for the same reason 5-6 isn’t likely. On those partial quotas, ALP+Grn is less than 1, so pretty much all of the “others” would need to go to them to get both seats. Reality is, a lot of it’s gonna be non-One Nation minor right. Not impossible, but pretty unlikely.
I am thinking Lib getting eliminated and a lot of people not wanting to vote ON,Green or ALP and their vote exhausting to make up the quota
Which just leaves the question can Greens get above ON.
Schubert has a fair swag of rural/semi-rural in it.
BK
But most of them seem to have brains. We’ll see, I suppose.
Old habits are hard to break. There may be the odd upset, but Ashton Hurn should be safe.
I’m hoping One Nation wins no lower house seats.
Hopeful for Dawson-Scott in Heysen, but heavily doubting.
Any analysis of support for ON that merely says it is the racist vote misses so much. It is one reason I won’t vote for them but they have no solutions I agree with.
BUT If it is the racist vote why has it not been expressed until now?
There are legitimate issues they are playing off. They have no answers though.
Is there no legitimacy in being angry with change? A housing crisis is reflected in genuine angst.
The cost of living is a genuine crisis.
But what can they achieve. Nothing.
Libs in SA no idea ,should of been pointing at Victoria and then exposing the debt SA is getting into under labor.Also should of gone hard on cost of living but it’s all to hard they stand for nothing in SA.
Yougov SA poll in Advertiser
https://www.skynews.com.au/australia-news/politics/bombshell-poll-shows-one-nation-leading-liberal-party-in-south-australia-ahead-of-state-election/news-story/11d1e53df014146239c848020567748c
Holy crap. That’s basically my prediction in a nutshell. Lol
Agree not fighting the campaign hard on ‘cost of living’ with at least 2-3 good specific policies relating to it along with the dire warnings on economy generally (pointing to Victoria not a bad shout, re debt etc.), is surely a mistake.
Those advising at the top needed more laser-focus and clearheaded thinking, and relied on the debates to reinforce that messaging (in faith that that would be enough to keep Libs at least the main opposition) instead of a muddled campaign due to fear of losing the base to ON.
Nearly everyone votes on economic/cost of living reasons to some degree, whether they admit it or not, so it’s not a right or left thing that would have cost Lib votes from the right.
Of course, I’m too far away to know what Libs really have focused on in this campaign. I’m going by PP and others’ posts on here, really, although I’ve read a few articles myself ad hoc.
It was never easy for Ashton Hurn, as angry accusations against a popular Premier probably not her style and carried the danger of accusations of naivety/inexperience (perhaps totally unfairly, due to her age).
Definitely signs of Mali love softening, but not nearly enough – or nearly enough of an alternative/contrast that enough people want to shift to. That might easily change within 18 months with 1 or 2 scandals, let’s see.
PP that’s utter rubbish.
Based on the election forecasting from the 2022 election, state debt was forecasted to be $32.2billion, instead labor has reduced that debt to $30.2billion. (Most of this debt was due to Covid, not blaming any side of politics).
The libs learnt very quickly in this term don’t bring that up, especially as there have been 4 surplus budgets that Labor has brought down in this term. Aston brought it up once in the first debate, and was shot down due to the hard cold facts.
Especially when the Lib promises to have totaled $6billion, and not saying what would be cut while labor has only promised 2.5billion. To add it up in simple terms, the more spent the more debt, and who is spending more? ps, as a local, there isn’t much you can cut from a budget that has had plenty of cuts.
facts matter.
Friendlyjordies on the SA Election
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lU2Y7P3PXmM
Watched two political analysts discuss the SA election. While they think ON will get more votes than the Libs they said they wouldn’t win any seats. They think they will come 2nd to Labor in many seats, and in rural seats, where they can win. they won’t get the preferences, even if they got the most votes there. They had Labor at 38 seats, LNP 5, Ind 4, ON zero. Had the Greens and Ind holding the balance of power in the Upper House.
If ON win Schubert, it will signal the end of the Lib party in SA.
Hurn would be very short odds to win.
TT
Same. We don’t want ON getting a foothold.
Mali said something interesting in the debate. He said Hanson (a Queenslander!) is their party leader but he (a Croweater) is the Labor party leader, and Hurn Lib.
Do ON have some weird structure?
pp
Cost of living has been the number one topic Libs have campaigned on. You just haven’t been following. Watch the debate.
Mali has had a very good answer saying that any politician who says they can reduce the cost of petrol or WeetBix (not sure why he used that) is lying and the best you can do is have a growing economy.
Catprog:
On those numbers, Green #2 is 0.24 quotas behind ON #3. If there’s tight preferencing on the left between Labor, Greens, AJP and Franks, and if there’s lots of exhausting / leakage on the right, then it’s possible. (The two words “if” are in bold for a reason.) Bear in mind if AJP or Franks get over 3%, they could end up ahead of the Greens and challenge for a seat themselves.
Winning with behind with a third of a quota is like doing it from 16% in a single-member seat. Mathematically possible, but realistically involves people grabbing the record books wondering “has this ever happened before?”. See Calwell (federal 2025) or Melton (Vic 2018). In both cases the party closer to a quota ended up winning.
__________
I had a look at the last few SA elections, to see who won upper house seats with partial quotas.
2022: #10 One Nation (0.51), #11 ALP (0.44). Liberal Democrats missed out with 0.40 quotas.
2018: #9 Lib (0.87), #10 Green (0.70), #11 ALP (0.47). Conservatives missed out with 0.42 quotas.
2014: #9 Green (0.78), #10 Family First (0.53), #11 ALP (0.72). Xenophon group missed out with 0.55 quotas.
2010: #9 Green (0.79), #10 FF (0.53), #11 Dignity for Disability (0.14). Lib with 0.73 quotas and ALP with 0.48 quotas both missed out.
It’s pretty obvious when group ticket voting stopped being a thing – the numbers developed a linear trend. Last two elections, the parties with the highest partial quotas have won the last available seats. Admittedly that’s only two data points, but it suggests the same thing will happen again this time.
Clem Macintyre saying the thinks ON won’t win a seat in lower but will get 2 in upper.
TBM: your prediction / pendulum thingy is all kinds of weird. Firstly, predicting every single seat (hell, ANY seat) to the nearest 0.1% is impossible. Even to within 1% is heroic.
Secondly, you’ve got the Libs crashing out of the top two in Schubert, Hammond and Finniss, but meanwhile holding COLTON? That seat was held by Labor for all of the Rann/Weatherill government. It’s odd that the Libs held it in 2022, and with a retiring MP, it’ll be one of the first they lose on Saturday.
Mawson becoming Labor’s third safest seat, despite a retiring long-term MP with a reputation as a vote magnet? (That was the bit where I realised you hadn’t just mass-added swing numbers to the pendulum on Wikipedia.) They won’t lose it, but it’ll get one of the smaller swings to Labor, and it’ll be low-hanging fruit for the Libs next time the tide goes out for Labor.
Giles and Elizabeth are the only two current Labor seats where One Nation make the 2cp? There’ll be plenty more than that. (Taylor, Giles, Port Adelaide, Elizabeth and Ramsay all had ALP vs SA Best margins in 2018, so there’s a good starting point.)
I see that “You no longer need a reason to vote early.”
https://www.ecsa.sa.gov.au/early-voting-centres
Is this the first jurisdiction where this has happened?
G
Last time they asked if I had a reason. They never asked what it was.
Diogenes:
It’s certainly possible. One Nation won’t win any seats off Labor for the same reason the Liberals won’t – the tide ain’t even remotely going in that direction. As for Lib seats, there’s a bunch of regional seats which should be winnable for them (see Wat’s comment about the Yorke Peninsula further up the page) that have independents in the way. I didn’t believe Fraser Ellis or Troy Bell had any chance of holding Narungga or Mt Gambier as independents given their circumstances (you can probably dig up an old PB comment of me saying so if you get bored), but they did. I similarly don’t believe Nick McBride has any chance of holding Mackillop, so watch me be wrong again. Or not. (Maybe Ellis will join One Nation after the election?)
My half-arsed prediction is that Chaffey will be their best seat, due to the tiny Labor vote and lack of viable independents. It’s got a history of an alternate right-wing party winning it (SA Nats), but they won’t get Labor or Green prefs the way Karlene Maywald did, so they’d need over 40% to win. Ngadjuri or Hammond by knocking the Libs out of the top two, maybe, but they’re marginal enough that they’re on Labor’s radar, and Hammond has an independent too (Airlie Keen making it yet another weird four-way tussle).
If One Nation crack 20% without a single seat to show for it, they’ll feel hard done by, and reasonably so. (That would have to be some kind of record.) However their response will probably be to scream about first-past-the-post being the only true form of democracy, instead of proportional representation which would actually help them.
@Bird of paradox Fair points to bring up. It’s just how traditional voting intention polls work. I never seen an MRP model, or any other predictor model out yet that would say otherwise. And until someone makes a better pendulum than the Mackerras pendulum then I’ll continue to use it until more reliable sources pop up.
Yawn…..
https://ipa.org.au/read/south-australia-on-victorian-trajectory-debt-set-to-double-in-just-5-years
Cost of living is rent increases,electricity price increases,state gov fees and charges etc.Libs nowhere.
There is one problem in SA that is catmint to ON voters and that’s the algal bloom. I’m pretty sure ON have no policy on it and don’t believe in climate change which is ironic but there it is.
PP
Ashton Hurn has mentioned it every time the economy comes up. Watch the debate. It came up again.
FCOL
Diogenes: does the independent in Finniss have any particular view on the algal bloom? That seat is probably more affected by it than any other.