Two late results from South Australia make it four out of four polls from the last week of the campaign with One Nation ahead of the Liberals:
• Courtesy of The Australian, Newspoll has the Liberals on 16% of the primary vote, their consolation being that this is two points higher than the Newspoll result from the start of the campaign. Labor is down four to 40%, One Nation down two to 22% and the Greens steady on 12%, and others up four to 10%. Peter Malinauskas is down two on approval to 65% and up four on disapproval to 31%, while Ashton Hurn is respectively up four to 43% and steady on 35%, for all the good the improvement seems to have done for the Liberals. Malinauskas leads 64-22 on preferred premier, in from 67-19. Newspoll’s policy appears to be not to provide two-party numbers when One Nation is running second. The poll was conducted last Thursday to this Wednesday from a sample of 1048.
• A DemosAU/Ace Strategies poll for InDaily has Labor at 37%, significantly moderating the 43% recorded in its last poll four weeks ago, with One Nation up four to 23%, the Liberals down one to 17% and the Greens down one to 11%. Peter Malinauskas records personal ratings of 49% positive, 31% neutral and 20% negative, while Ashton Hurn is respectively at 21%, 58% and 21%, and Cory Bernardi is at 20%, 44% and 36%. Malinauskas leads Hurn 56-21 on preferred premier. Like Newspoll, the poll was conducted last Thursday to this Wednesday, the sample in this case being 1242.
Three of this week’s four polls have broken down their results by inner metropolitan, outer metropolitan and regional, as detailed on the table below, and the story they tell is consistent enough that no more need be added to my earlier analysis of the Fox & Hedgehog result, which concluded that Labor could potentially sweep the board in Adelaide, Bragg being the most likely Liberal hold-out. The situation in the regions is a good deal harder to read, with One Nation needing to overcome Labor preferences and a number of strong independents to make anything out of its commanding primary vote. The report by David Penberthy in The Australian accompanying the Newspoll result rates its strongest chances as Narungga, Hammond, Flinders and Ngadjuri.
| ALP | LIB | ON | GRN | OTH | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Inner Metro | |||||
| Fox & Hedgehog | 45 | 19 | 15 | 13 | 8 |
| YouGov | 42 | 19 | 17 | 14 | 8 |
| DemosAU | 44 | 19 | 15 | 13 | 9 |
| Outer Metro | |||||
| Fox & Hedgehog | 44 | 12 | 20 | 11 | 13 |
| YouGov | 45 | 17 | 21 | 10 | 7 |
| DemosAU | 38 | 15 | 24 | 10 | 13 |
| Regional | |||||
| Fox & Hedgehog | 22 | 25 | 28 | 8 | 17 |
| YouGov | 24 | 21 | 27 | 13 | 15 |
| DemosAU | 23 | 15 | 39 | 9 | 14 |
UPDATE (Resolve Strategic): One last poll comes from Resolve Strategic, which it describes as “experimental” on the grounds that respondents were met with an interactive AI voice. Their caution is no doubt informed by the fact that the poll has an even higher One Nation vote than everyone else, at 28%, with Labor coming in well below par on 32%, the Liberals about evens at 18% and the Greens on 10%. The poll was conducted on Monday from a sample of 1112.
Holdenhillbilly the tally of prepolls includes yesterday so 35.4% of eligible voters. Or about 40% of actual voters.
What I was told about the US colour convention is that, before 2000, TV networks had the convention of using blue to represent the party currently in the White House and red to represent the other party. So, for instance, in 1980, the states that went for Carter were blue and those that went for Reagan were red, whereas in 1984, Reagan’s were blue and Mondale’s were red. Similarly, in 1992, Clinton’s were red and Bush (Sr.)’s were blue and then in 1996, Clinton’s were blue and Dole’s were red.
In 2000, that convention was adhered to with Gore being represented by blue and Bush being represented by red. However, due to the closeness and the whole Florida situation, meaning the results weren’t known for weeks, the classic map showing a red country with blue edges started entering the public consciousness. Also, discourse involving “blue states” and “red states” arose, even after the election was over (e.g. “Don’t blame me, I’m from a blue state!”) that, by 2004, it just became a thing that blue means Democratic and red means Republican, and that’s stuck ever since.
Anthony Zougras, A PhD candidate in South Australia, has posted his election conditions.
https://anthonyhistoryrant.blogspot.com/2026/03/predictions-for-2026-south-australian.html
Leroy, that guy’s prediction of one of the LC seats being won by SA Best is interesting. I won’t be upset if that happens. Unlike some of the other people who had been pulled up by Nick Xenophon’s coattails over the years, Connie Bonaros is actually a decent MLC and I wish she managed to have a better public profile so that she could be a popular independent who’s easily electable. So, if she managed to scrape through, I would not be upset. I’m doubtful she will, but you never know.
Orange is the colour for Harmony Day, not really suited to the hate on One Nation but I’d assume it will stick
Just voted a few minutes ago. It’s going to be interesting to see A.) if The Liberals keep their only fairly safe seat in Adelaide (Bragg (7.2%)), and B.) what happens with Regional South Australia.
Hoping for a solid Labor victory and One Nation underperformance.
Going out on a limb based on nothing but gut feel:
Libs 3, Bragg, Schubert and Mackillop
One Nation 1, Chaffey
Independents, 6, Stuart, Kavel, Narrunga, Mount Gambier, Flinders, Finniss
ALP 37, everything else.
The only big surprises would be if the Libs manage to win 8 or more seats, or One Nation win 3 or more.
Zougras is funny:
“I do also want to see how many people vote for wanted man Aoi Baxter (ON) now that he’s been disendorsed by the party. If he gets double digits still, that will be hilarious.”
On Reddit someone reported seeing Baxter at an early voting place yesterday, where he got a call, then ran off, leaving behind a chair and a box of HTVs.
The Australian…DAVID PENBERTHY (take out from a longer article)
“One Liberal volunteer in Adelaide’s south described the scene at pre-poll in the seat of Davenport as“devastating”
“No one is taking my Lib cards but so many for One Nation,” the Liberal volunteer said.
“Erin Thompson (the Labor incumbent) came and gave me a hug and said she is really worried.
“Her opinion was there were even more ON how-to-votes taken then hers. I don’t think they will beat her but the Lib vote has massively tanked, no one was taking ours at all.”
Shellbell
He is tipping McBride to retain his seat despite being on home detention for domestic violence.
He also predicted no Greens or ON seats. And that Hurn would lose her seat to a 21 year old Uni student. That would would be as big a disaster for SA as if ON wins a bad of seats.
Mali would have no opposition. And that leads to bad governments.
Just voted in the seat of Adelaide….the innerest of inner city seats. Not a One Nation corflute or volunteer on site….About 4 ALP 2 Lib and a Green ….Most people taking the Labor paper. But if One Nation cant/wont contest the inner city, then they cant win elections….(Based on one Booth, in One seat)…..I suspect that even a few of the North Adelaide Grandees are holding their powdered noses and voting Labor
I don’t know if this is the case in other states but the Advertiser is incredibly centrist. They enthusiastically endorsed Mali, gave Hurn a big tick and kicked One Nation. But the Australian is at the other extreme with ON all the rage.
I do expect, maybe downgrading to quietly confident, that SA will provide the first electoral rebuff of ON. They will in all likelihood poll 20% in most seats and high 20s in country seats, but I expect the flow of preferences will mean they will win 1 seat at best (hope this comment ages well). Cant see any Green or reasonable independent voter preferencing them….and I expect a huge leakage of Liberal votes will end up in the Labor column eventually. Of course expect a huge uproar of dim wits who dont understand preferential voting when they receive 20+% of the vote and get 1 or 0 seats
Last minute Liberal poster appears outside polling booths.
I’m voting for Shannon’s sister.
Albonater – Adelaide is the seat where One Nation has disendorsed the runaway Pom who wishes to become a voluntary convict in SA. Not a good guide.
Final prediction:
2PP 59.5% to Labor.
Seat count:
Labor 36
Greens 0
Others 4
One Nation 3
Libs 4
Just back from handing out HTVs at a big polling booth in Bragg in Adelaide’s eastern suburbs, supposedly their safest seat in Adelaide. Notable features:
– like Albonator in Adelaide, there was zero One Nation presence at this booth. No people, signs or HTVs. Labor, Liberal and Greens were well staffed.
– voting was unusually quiet for the first two hours but has picked up heavily around 11am. It was a beautiful day. Smart ones at the beach?
– I didn’t sense any “mood for change.”
– the Liberals were really pulling out all stocks in Bragg. There were plenty of helpers including a quartet of “young Liberals” who arrived en masse around 11am. I asked where they were from. One guy was driven in from northern Adelaide, the other guy was flown from Sydney(!) Two girls were locals, dropped off by their mother, under instructions to help.
– this is normally a safe Liberal booth (St Peters Girls). If Labor could just square it, that would be great.
So, One Nation preselected an immigrant who had been charged with sexual assault in their home country? Interesting.
If there is one upside to the continued rise of One Nation, its seeing the polling companies give the smaller states some love for once. I think SA just got a single Newspoll during the final weeks of the campaign in 2022.
Spence: Granted, but surely they would like votes in the upper chamber at least from the disaster in this seat?
She has her democracy sausage….
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/us-politics/8700179/Republican-candidates-gather-for-Iowa-straw-poll.html
Oh Dear.
‘As of Friday, close to 400,000 early votes have already been cast in the past week, smashing the previous record of 212,466 cast in 2022.’
Herald Sun now.
kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2026/03/south-australia-2026-live.html
South Australia 2026 Live. Intro post up now, live comments from 6 pm SA time as numbers arrive. #saparli
Asha: yes, we have had four pollsters poll twice and two once in or around this campaign (first F+H was slightly before the start of the campaign proper). 2022 had just two Newspolls, a YouGov and a pre-campaign Dynata. 2018 had two Newspolls, one ReachTEL during the campaign and one just before.
I think the ON thing got the pollsters excited. Picking the winds of change and the work they did on rural/metro and reasons for their vote, where they saw themselves on the spectrum etc
Much better than previously.
Victorians esp will be watching this closely. If it can happen in SA with a popular Labor premier, it really can happen in Vic.
My final prediction is Labor 37 Libs 3 Greens 1 and others 6
Just voted at Norwood Primary. Feedback from volunteers is that during early voting there have been a couple of dozen people a day looking for the non-existent One Nation How to Votes. Otherwise, strong Labor support and little for the Liberals. No One Nation volunteers on the booth today either.
I live in Taperoo in the Electorate of Port Adelaide, and I saw 1 One Nation volunteer with a handful of how-to-vote cards, but otherwise not much activity over here either.
Genuinely quite excited to watch this one unfold. With both a Labor landslide apparently on the cards as well as One Nation’s first electoral test since they began surging in the polls, there should be plenty to satisfy both my partisan and pseph sides.
I won’t be bothering to make a proper seat prediction, but I do think that One Nation will win at least one lower house seat, that the Liberals are very unlikely to win more than five lower house seats, and that the incumbent independents that haven’t had legal dramas of some variety should all retain their seats.
I’m hoping One Nation will fail to live up to their polling expectations (or, at least, fail to convert their votes into seats), but I suspect we will not be so lucky. Apart from Bernardi’s dumbass comments and the recent revelations about their candidate in Adelaide, they have run a surprisingly disciplined campaign by One Nation standards while neither the government nor the opposition have had a great final few weeks. While I doubt the government’s majority will be in any sort of jeopardy, I reckon ON will clean up in many formerly safe Liberal seats and give Labor some scares in their own territory.
Boldly predicting ON won’t win any seats despite all the hype. I think a quarter of the vote isn’t enough when a lot of sane voters will be putting them towards the bottom of the ballot paper.
My prediction:
Lower House
LIB 5: Flinders, Mackillop, Chaffey, Schubert, Bragg
IND 5: Kavel, Stuart, Mount Gambier, Narrunga, Finniss
LAB 37: The rest
Upper House
LAB 5
GRN 1
ON 2
LIB 2
OTH 1
Large IT failures in many northern and north-east metro electorates and consequently longer lines than needed (they do not have paper lists to cross off but have computers instead).
Given Labor now occupy the centre-right ground, the Liberal Party are largely redundant. SA has always been a state more in line with a broad progressivism than either conservative or reactionary forces.
One person reported the ballot the official handed to them was unsigned. They told the official they needed to sign it for it to be valid. The look of horror on their face when they said they hadn’t signed any of the ballots before. It was 11am and there must have been thousands of votes already placed there.
HH: “It was 11am and there must have been thousands of votes already placed there.”…..I wonder what they will do…they cant disenfranchise thosands of people because of an admin mistake surely?
It’s a rectifiable administrative error. They have a count of how many ballots they’ve issued at that booth. When they open the ballot boxes they will count the ballot papers. If there aren’t more in the boxes than they’ve issued there is no continuing problem.
Albonator:
I mean, when the feds lost 1400-odd WA Senate ballots back in the day they ended up having to throw out the entire Senate election and hold another one. (About 40,000 fewer people turned out for the makeup election. Oopsie.)
But that election was so close those 1400 votes could have swung it one way or the other. There almost certainly aren’t actually thousands of affected ballots–divide the number of voters in any given seat (24k or so) by the number of polling stations in each seat (say a dozen on average) by the number of people they have issuing ballots (there were four for regular ballots at mine) and the fact that not everyone votes in the early morning (take out one-third voting early, postally, or out of their district; then, conservatively, take out about half the remainder voting after 11am) and I’m guesstimating about eighty or ninety unlucky people. If the guy was doing absent votes, probably even fewer, because it takes longer to do the paperwork and they’ll be spread across a number of different seats. My guess is they’ll put the unsigned ballots aside on the night and disregard them unless the affected seat is really that close. But if it is, then I guess the legal arguments could go either way between “count them, c’mon” and “throw out the whole seat’s results and go again.”
Okay, ignore what I just said and pay attention to andrewmck.
I’ve just been hunting down the legislation for this scenario.
Yes, it should not have happened and it should have been picked up by someone earlier but it can happen. Thankfully, no voter should be disenfranchised.
Electoral Act 1985 (SA)
https://www.legislation.sa.gov.au/lz?path=/C/A/ELECTORAL%20ACT%201985
“94—Informal ballot papers
(2) A ballot paper that is not duly authenticated by initials or an official mark is not
informal by reason of subsection (1)(a) if the officer responsible for considering
whether the ballot paper should be admitted is satisfied that it is an authentic ballot
paper on which a voter has marked his or her vote.”
AEC legislation also has a very similar section / outcome for handling of such instances.
Predicting ON gets One seat, Cory Bernadi, PH issues press release stating the election has been rigged
Sceptic: Only 9% needed for an upper house seat and ON have been polling 22-24%. They will get 2 seats easy with leftover votes from the family first and those of that ilk.
Just came back from voting. Queue was pretty long and the school gym we were inside was stuffy. No problems with getting my name marked off once it was my turn. Don’t worry, both ballots were signed by the worker.
On the way in, it was pretty quiet for the most part. The usual signage littered the fence but there were only HTV volunteers for One Nation and Labor. There were about 4 or 5 ON volunteers and they seemed very active and friendly, bantering with people coming in. Whereas the Labor volunteers looked like two Young Labor members. One of them, a young lady only would say “Would you like a how to vote” when someone walked past.
As for the take-up, there were quite a few people holding One Nation HTVs but some of those people were holding Labor ones too, so they may have just taken one or both to be polite. There were also quite a few people that were only holding Labor HTVs, so who knows? Y’all should know I am not the biggest fan of anecdotal evidence.
I don’t know where the HTV volunteers for anyone else was. While I didn’t expect any minor party volunteers, there were no Liberals or Greens. Perhaps they were there earlier and packed up.
Anyway, just over an hour to go and then it’s over and soon after we can start to find out what’s truly going on in the minds of Voterland. Hopefully that earlier SNAFU won’t cause too much trouble. I’m sure everyone will be perfectly reasonable about it all.
My predictions: pretty similar to everyone else. ALP 36, Lib 3, ON 1, Ind 7.
Liberals: Bragg, Schubert, MacKillop.
One Nation: Chaffey.
Independent: Flinders, Stuart, Narungga, Kavel, Finniss, Hammond, Mt Gambier.
In the upper house: a 6-5 split to the left. ALP 4 ON 2 Lib 2 Grn 1, with the last two seats between ALP #5, Grn #2, AJP or Franks (left) and ON #3, FF or perhaps Lib #3 if they do well on prefs (right).
__________
Comments:
Labor sweep Adelaide except for Bragg. That’s the easy part!
Heysen: the Greens might get this instead of Labor, but they’ve had internal dramas so it doesn’t look like their year.
Kavel: the Libs don’t hold it now and won’t notionally keep it with a uniform swing, so it’s Labor or Schultz. Dan Cregan’s big primary vote has to go somewhere, so Schultz it is.
Ngadjuri: marginal enough for Labor to win even if you ignore their candidate, and it’s Tony Piccolo – he was the local MP for a fair bit of this seat when it was in Light. Same applies if ON replace the Libs in the 2cp – Labor won’t come third here.
Schubert: Hurn’s seat, Labor need a 12% swing, ON need close to double that. Not happening.
Narungga: genuinely puzzling three-way. I’ll pick Fraser Ellis just because he’s there, although if he wasn’t this would be a gimme for ON, and they might end up with it anyway if his criminal charges end up causing a by-election.
Hammond: the biggest mess of the election, with four candidates who all have a chance of winning. Lib held, marginal enough for Labor to have a go, Airlie Keen would’ve won last time if she’d made the 2cp, and ON are in there too. I’m going with Keen just because she seems to be the Condorcet winner (go on, look it up).
Finniss: Lou Nicholson and it won’t be close. Next!
Flinders: assuming Labor come third, their prefs will favour Ind over Lib or ON, and this area has had Liz Habermann and Anita Kuss flying the indie flag in the recent past, so Petherick is my tip.
Stuart: safe retain for Geoff Brock, and good odds for an exotic Ind/ON 2cp.
Chaffey: the only straight Lib/ON contest of the whole election. It’d be nuts if One Nation got 20% statewide and not a single seat to show for it, so here they go.
MacKillop: Libs are starting from 62% here, and they’re losing the personal vote of… someone under house arrest for DV offences. They won’t miss the top two and they’ll get Labor prefs, so they’ll hold this.
Mt Gambier: this has been an independent seat for so long it’d be strange if that changed now. Fatchen to succeed Bell.
Further to the uninitialled ballots issue …
Given the discretion in s93(2), this is only likely to become an issue if the number of ballots that emerge from the ballot boxes is greater than the number recorded as being issued. (A routine reconciliation is done at the start of the scrutiny.) In about 20 years of scrutineering I never saw this happen, although there were a number of occasions when there were less ballots in the boxes than had been issued. Those cases were usually resolved by a search of nearby rubbish bins.
Ghost Of Whitlam says:
Saturday, March 21, 2026 at 5:58 pm
Pauline chucking a tanty already. Banning the ABC because they reported on her dodgy candidate with a sexual offence arrest warrant in the UK. Perhaps Pauline only likes confirmed rapists like Trump.
________________________________
Did she call them out as fake news? If the ON results are a fizzle will the SA election commission get called out for voter fraud due to the computer issues today, maybe throw in some illegal voters to the bingo card as well as a ‘stolen’ election. Go on Pauline, give it both barrels with all the MAGA greatest hits, will show those undecideds just what an unoriginal Trump clone you are, guaranteed ‘winning’
Thinking about the result, sorry but I think ON are going to score lower house seats. I hope I am wrong.
There was little sign of any interest in ON at Bragg today. But if the ON vote is up overall and yet is not in urban seats, then it must be concentrated in rural seats. That means ON are going to win some rural seats.
My final prediction is Labor 36 Libs 3 ON 3 and Ind 5
Labor 35
Lib 6
ON 1
Ind 5
New thread.
Re initialling of ballot papers:
Subsection 73(3) of the SA Electoral Act provides as follows:
“(3) When a ballot paper is issued to a voter it must be authenticated—
(a) by the initials of the officer by whom it is issued; or
(b) by a prescribed mark.”
The prescribed mark (in bygone days, usually a watermark) is typically added as part of the ballot paper production process. Initials are therefore only required if, for some reason, a ballot paper has been produced without the prescribed mark.
So this issue will probably turn out to be a complete nothingburger.