Click here for full display of South Australian election results.
Some very general observations on the result before diving into specifics. As expected, Labor appears to have won every seat in Adelaide except Bragg, where Liberal member Jack Batty achieved a surprisingly normal-looking result. That involved unseating the Liberals in Colton, Hartley and Morialta, which Labor had held at various points during its previous time in government, together with Morphett and Unley, which it hadn’t. In a great many other seats in Adelaide, the Liberals have been reduced to minor party status, in many places running fourth and in one place even fifth. My system is calling four seats for the Liberals and has them leading in a fifth, making them likely but not certain to retain opposition status ahead of One Nation, who are being called in three and ahead in a fourth.
Labor may not be entirely spared the One Nation lash though, which needless to say has been the other big story of the election. My own preference estimates suggest a knife-edge result in Light, which the long-serving and highly popular incumbent Tony Piccolo abandoned for an unsuccessful run in Ngadjuri, presumably to help Labor win both seats but in fact putting them at the risk of winning neither. The ABC’s preference estimates give Labor a slightly more comfortable margin of 2.0%, but we really won’t know until we get a fresh two-candidate count, which hopefully ECSA will conduct over the coming days. Also in northern Adelaide, Elizabeth and Taylor have also gone from being safe Labor seats against Liberal to marginal ones against One Nation.
My system is calling three and very nearly four regional seats for One Nation, though none are being given away by the ABC. However, it’s difficult to see the Liberals closing their substantial primary vote deficits in MacKillop and Narungga, and in neither case is the independent incumbent competitive. I’m a little less confident about my system’s call of Ngadjuri for One Nation, but Liberal incumbent Penny Pratt will undoubtedly have a difficult time overcoming Labor to make the final count, as she’s effectively tied with them on the primary vote at present and the minor parties whose preferences will decide the issue are mostly of the left. If she can’t manage it, my system is undoubtedly correct in projecting that her preferences will give the seat to One Nation over Labor.
I am just about giving Hammond to One Nation, where Liberal member Adrian Pederick has fallen to a fairly distant third, with his preferences set to decide the result for One Nation over Labor, each of whom have about 27% on the primary vote. Neither my system nor the ABC’s are writing off One Nation’s chances of deposing independent Geoff Brock in Stuart, where we’re both estimating margins for Brock of 4.5% and applying very conservative error margins due to the complications involved in projecting an independent-held seat that has gained territory in a redistribution. Brock would have to be rated a pretty clear favourite though.
There are two other seats that my system rates as in doubt. Heysen is rated a three-way contest between Liberal, Labor and the Greens: the latter would have to close a small deficit against Labor to make the final count, but my system gives them a solid chance mostly by giving them more preferences than Labor from One Nation, based on observation of preference distributions from the federal election. It’s a close run thing though, and should they fall short, ECSA’s notional two-candidate count shows Labor leading Liberal in two-candidate terms by all of two votes, although late counting will presumably favour the Liberals.
Kavel looks fiendishly complicated, with no candidate polling higher than 23.9%. That candidate is Labor’s, who my system is rating the favourite, but its preference assumptions wouldn’t need to be too far wrong to overturn this. ECSA’s two-candidate count shows independent Matt Schultz will win if he faces off against Labor in the final count, but to do that he will have to get ahead of One Nation, who he slightly leads on the primary vote. However, my system assumes Liberal will drop out before all of the above, which I think very likely, and has more of their preferences going to One Nation than to Schultz, which is little more than a guess.
Those who were following my results late last night may notice some changes to the projections, which are due not to late counting but my reconfigurations of who the last three candidates are likely to be and changes to preference estimates. The system has been dealing with combinations of candidates that hadn’t previously been encountered, and in some cases was splitting preferences evenly where it had no defaults to fall back on. I haven’t been keeping score, but I believe my system had been calling Kavel to Matt Schultz on this basis, and I’m certain it wasn’t calling Finniss for independent Lou Nicholson, as it’s now doing. It’s more than possible that I’ll unearth another anomaly or two when I review the matter in the morning, or more likely afternoon.
I’m not exactly sure what can be expected today in the way of counting, but around half of the early voting centres were evidently unable to complete their primary vote counts by the end of last night, and only a few reported two-candidate numbers. There has been a fair bit of talk about the impact of South Australia’s unique savings provisions that cause ballots that have not been fully numbered to be deemed to conform with preference tickets pre-registered by the parties in question. This is of particular interest due to One Nation how-to-vote cards that show only a number one for the One Nation box and advise voters to fill out the rest in order of preference, which some may have misinterpreted as meaning a single number constituted a valid vote for One Nation.
However, the effect of this in late counting will be minor. One Nation lodged multiple registered tickets with the effect that its saved preferences will divide evenly between Labor and Liberal. Only in the four seats where it was included in the notional two-candidate count (Chaffey, Giles, Schubert and Wright) are its own soon-to-be-saved votes currently withheld from a published count, and none of these are in doubt. Furthermore, the differences in the number of votes reported on the primary vote and two-candidate counts is not all that dramatic, so the number of votes should in any case not be over-estimated.
Before I finally turn in for the evening, my first look at the Legislative Council result. Only 219,769 first preference votes have been counted, which is barely a third of the lower house count total, so this must be considered highly preliminary. It currently looks very much like Labor four, One Nation three, Liberal two and Greens one, with one more seat in doubt. With Labor on 4.4 quotas and the Greens on 1.4, one would think their collective surplus of 0.8 quotas would mean a further seat for one or the other. That would add up to nine or ten seats for Labor in the new parliament along with two or three for the Greens, for a combined total of 12 out of 22. The Liberals would have six, and One Nation’s new cohort of three would be supplemented by former party member Sarah Game, whose Fair Go for Australians party was one of a number of right-of-centre concerns that accomplished very little at this election.
During the ABC coverage they were showing the split better Metropolitan and Rural, but I wondered whether the split in terms of actual seats in those areas was more 80% to 20% ?
TK
Perhaps with some of those northern seats being a contest, if between Labor and ON, they might get a bit of pork barrelling. Being ultra safe has been shown to reduce your funding.
SA could do with a few more marginal federal seats.
Diogenes
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Lots of operating theaters even had to close because of lack of maintenance.
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Don’t know what the issue is in Victoria but I just had a hip replacement as day surgery ( which worked out well, and kept me out of the most dangerous place for sick people, just look at the correlation between death and location) because there was no operating theater available for stuff like that for months.
It’s made an enormous difference to my life, that is for sure.
@Diogenes at 10:31pm
Agreed. Labor can’t afford to get arrogant about its “safe seats”. The Liberals did, and they lost most of their inner city seats to the Teals.
Next up for election is Victoria in November, and they already slipped a lot in their previously solid red Western and Northern Melbourne electorates. I’d propose that they approach the election in a defensive mindset. Do good things for the seats they hold, they’re probably not going to win anything more from the Coalition here, and there’s One Nation in the mix too.
Diogenes at 10.31 pm
“SA could do with a few more marginal federal seats.”
A few more marginal? Hardly any were marginal after May 2025, probably less so now.
The most marginal seat is the Lib held outback seat of Grey at 4.6%, followed by Sturt on 6.6%. There is nothing else under 10%. Even Boothby is on 11%.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/federal/2025/results?sortBy=latest&filter=all&selectedRegion=sa&selectedParty=all&partyWonBy=all&partyHeldBy=all
Kirsdarke at 10.44 pm
It will be hard for the Hanson cult to replicate that vote in country Victoria, because the Vic Nats are not quite as witless as the SA or Vic Libs.
The disaster for the SA Libs is a warning to the Vic Nats. Do they respect Ron Boswell and put the Hanson cult last, or do they compete with the Libs in a self-destruction effort?
In other words, every election is contextually different. This was the lesson of the Canadian federal election last year. Hanson had a fairly free run in SA. That won’t last.
If the Nats and Libs agree to put the Hanson cult last, they have no hope of any seats.
The Nats have a strong self-interest in doing so. The Libs will be squeezed into doing it.
Monty, I expect we have some crossover in terms of what we think makes a good city. But I think the lack of high/medium density housing is a huge negative for Adelaide and causes both endless urban sprawl and the constant subdivision of existing blocks to cram more single/two level dwellings into less and less space. I’d much rather we have 10 stories of apartments along every main road and then stop the subdivision of the blocks one street back.
I also agree about green space, but that’s a different issue. Our rules about trees and the percentage of a block which must be retained as green space are absolutely pathetic. The rule should be NO diminution in green space or tree canopy – if you’re removing some you need to replace it somewhere else on the same block. But again, if more people live in less square metres of space on the ground there is no reason at all that this can’t lead to more green space overall, not less. Setups like what they are doing at Glenside seem quite promising, higher density housing surrounded by lots of green space.
As for Batty, the complaint wasn’t that he was a solicitor, it was about his lack of actual experience. I generally think lawyers being in government is a good thing because understanding laws is pretty important if your job is making laws. My point was that like so many LNP candidates he didn’t actually work for long enough to have much in the way of real world experience before teleporting into parliament.
love all of these ramblings about Morphett… As someone who actually lives here.. talk about out of touch.
@Dr Doolittle at 10:55pm
Well, guess we’ll have to see what happens in the Victorian Coalition until November.
First up is whether or not Moira Deeming or Bev McArthur lose their preselections for #1 Liberal position for Western Metropolitan and Western Victoria. If they do, I think they’ll easily defect to One Nation.
Second is how Jess Wilson navigates through the News Corp media landscape that previously supported the Coalition unconditionally, but now they seem open to following Big Gina in supporting One Nation.
Third is whether or not Jacinta Allan actually has any political acumen in restoring her credentials as Labor leader after the past few months where she’s in the doldrums in approval ratings yet Labor still remains competitive.
(Sorry to interrupt a SA thread with Victorian politics, just it felt relevant to say so. Obviously Peter Mali has won his big triumph, but that’s something that has lessons for Victorian Labor too).
JD,
Not sure about that map, but that would be about right – Greater Adelaide (inc Two Wells, Gawler, Mt Barker, Ad Hills) is ~78% of the state by population.
Photography is a talent; but the skill is learned. The talent is knowing where and when to capture a moment. The skill is knowing how. Daniel Taylor has both. Of course, I may be reading too much into Daniel’s photo of Cori Bernadi, but it took my breath away, and not in a good way. It’s the 4th photo in this article.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-22/one-nation-analysis/106483618
Scroll past Pauline, the cute kid, and the Liberal leader, until you reach Bernadi. I won’t post the photo here. Bernadi doesn’t look happy.
I’m wondering; before Bernadi left the federal Libs, did he and Joyce get on?
I went to Glenelg today. So don’t talk to me about Morphett.
@Late Riser
That’s just Bernardi trying to make a Donald Trump mugshot face.
He’s even done the Oompa-loompa big man makeup tan.
Bernardi looks slightly less like a wax statue in that picture than he does normally so I’d say it’s a relatively flattering picture of him.
I saw old mate Cory in Gluttony at the Fringe last year and I have to say I haven’t seen anyone look that uncomfortable around normal human people since Zuckerberg testified before Congress
This is the photo in question.
It’s 100% Trump MAGA makeup.
OK, since it’s been posted, I feel compelled to say it. In my imagination I see a thought bubble in that photo, with two words, “Daddy’s home.”
If the Liberal party and National party dont put Hansons One Nation party last in their preferences in Farrer and all future elections they will be signing their political death warrant.
Fred
It’s amazing what they can do as day surgery now.
My very first intern job in 1991 was on orthopaedics. The doctors had NFI about anything other than bones.
I used to dread looking after the hip and knee replacement patients. They lost so much blood and could hardly move so got pneumonia. Now it’s day surgery.
I suppose gall bladders were similar. Open gall bladders really hurt after and took ages to go home. Now it’s day surgery.
I think the best hope for our health is better digital systems and AI. For eg, tailoring the medication to your genome. Lots of antidepressants don’t work in an individual patient. You prescribe the one that works most often with the least side effects. It trial and error. Now you can predict more accurately how a patient will respond.
Individualised health care is a long way off but tailored care should get people better more quickly.
How many classic ALP/Lib margins are left in SA? There’s 11 in metro Adelaide from the map in that ABC article (the 10 they’ve coloured blue, plus Waite where ON prefs will push them ahead of the Greens), and then there’s Schubert and maybe Heysen. If that’s it, 13 at most out of 47 – barely a quarter.
Late Riser: never mind Joyce, I’m much more interested in how Bernardi and Dennis Hood get on. They were actually in the same party at one point – Hood was originally elected as Family First, which merged into Bernardi’s failed Conservatives party, then joined the Libs after the Conservatives lost the other FF seat in 2018. Now they’re in the same parliament but different parties.
By the way: is Dennis Hood related to the other two Hoods? (Ben the upper house Lib and Lucy the Labor MP for Adelaide are brother and sister.)
New thread.
I saw that photo as more of a near mindless thug trying desperately to force a thought through the grey concrete that passes for a brain while doing a manly macho man pose at the same time for the camera.