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.
It’s a shame Starmer’s government is so hopeless on most fronts because the strides they have taken on environmental protection and the energy transition are quite impressive.
The less said about the rest of their (lack of) agenda, the better. Hopefully landslide Labor governments in Australia look at Starmer as a cautionary tale in the futility of trying to push nativist in an attempt to hold off reactionaries.
Elizabeth contains Davoren Park which has the dubious distinction of having the lowest socio-economic development index of any postcode in Australia.
Mabwm says:
Sunday, March 22, 2026 at 3:01 pm
When fascism comes to Australia it will be wrapped in yesterday’s newspaper and carrying fish and chips.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
That statement just about wraps it up.
I now live in the one of the five safest Labor seats in the state, so I suppose it’s a good thing that all the necessary school sports changing rooms and intersection upgrades were completed in the last four years because the firehose of pork is no doubt about to be directed at holding off PHON in the outer metropolitan area.
The ABC has fiddled with its preference estimates and finally called Ngadjuri for One Nation, with them ahead in three more seats.
To embellish Diogenes’ comment, the seat of Elizabeth includes Eliz Downs, Eliz North, Eliz Park, Eliz, Eliz East, Eliz Grove and part of Eliz South, all of which are in the 10 most disadvantaged suburbs in Adelaide. And some of Smithfield, which is 11th. It doesn’t include Davoren Park (my home not too long ago) but some of those above are in the same postcode (5113).
So Adelaide’s 11 poorest suburbs (Index of disadvantage, 2021 census) are all in one contiguous bloc – there’s no poorer area of that size elsewhere in metro Australia – and the division of Elizabeth covers most of it plus a few other suburbs.
That area has long been among the safest for Labor but had at least one of the only booths that swung to Lib last year (Eliz South, #1 poorest suburb and former home of Holden).
Australian flag capes and co-opted Eureka flags.
Must say I’m a little surprised by the Davoren Park stat (though not surprised about the broader area being the most disadvantaged in metro Australia) but I guess most Indigenous communities are too small to have their own postcodes so don’t get picked up in that type of analysis.
Eric
The impression I get in health is that there is a concerted effort to improve services for the people of the north. The Lyell is much much better than it used to be and there are plans for a lot more. But the social determinants of health are pretty hard to overcome.
Monty, couldn’t disagree with that view more. It’s exactly what has held Adelaide/SA back for the last 30 years while the rest of the country rockets ahead (well, maybe not Hobart). It’s insane that we have what amounts to Australia’s version of Central Park and a bunch of NIMBYs constantly oppose the obvious next step of going medium/high density either side of it. Opening up high density corridors and lifting height restrictions in the city are amongst the government’s better policies.
IMHO is also rather selfish to want to prevent change in leafy inner city suburbs, essentially outsourcing the solution to the housing crisis to the outer suburbs where presumably the less well off can all live in ‘shake and bake’ dog boxes.
Batty is a classic LNP candidate. He worked as a solicitor for all of five minutes, achieved nothing of note in that capacity and then aged about 12 years old took that “real world experience”, a Henry Bucks suit and a private school boy haircut to an election and became an MP. Exactly not the type of person equipped to make decisions about the lives of others IMHO, but that’s every Liberal candidate isn’t it?
Casey Briggs says the ABC’s changed call on Ngadjuri is to do with the addition of a new booth result. This would be the Two Wells early voting centre, which was strong for Labor and very weak for Liberal, causing the Liberal to fall to third in their projection. My own projection was calling this all along.
BT
Sounds like I might have that slightly wrong. It was postcode based. There are lots of measures or poorest etc. Average income isn’t very good. The Feds have several different other measures which are more complicated.
As Eric says, whatever way it’s looked at, the most northern suburbs of Adelaide form a very large underprivileged area.
Patrick
Women tell me he is very handsome, up there with Mali.
On that, Abrahamson said that seeing Mali and Hurn together was like seeing the King and Queen of SA because they are both well-groomed, professional, polished, polite and a bit vanilla (which is a great flavour).
He made it sound like SA needed a jester like Hanson who was the opposite.
The Liberals have made a late rally in Morphett after doing quite a lot better at the electorate’s early voting centre than they did on election day. Now lineball. https://pollbludger.net/sa2026/Results/HA.htm?s=Morphett
BT,
There are a few poorer postcodes than 5113.
Depending which index you use, 4713, 6770, 6762, 4892, 5734, 2306, 7257, 6431, 6765, 6760 and a few more are more disadvantaged. Most of those include Aboriginal communities. 2306 is Windale in Newcastle. 5113 would be the poorest in a major city.
Jumped to 63% counted?
Eric
How to fix it? We know in health there is a poverty trap where poor services lead to worse health outcomes which in turn make it harder to get a (good) job which becomes a vicious cycle. And understandably worse mental health outcomes and poorer diets and that just becomes a spiral.
People living in the 5113 postcode have a 20 year lower life expectancy than Medindie which is 20 minutes away. 20 years!! One year per minute drive.
So, as the dust settles we’re looking at likely 4 for ON in the Lower House, and 3 in the Upper. Accounting for size of the parliament, would that make them the most successful 3rd party to date at a state level, in a non Hare-Clark electorate (Qld 1998 aside) or does that still belong to NSW or Vic Greens who are on par on total numbers but in larger parliaments? I don’t think the DLP or the Democrats ever made out this well?
It’s possible that the disadvantage there will get diluted as the poorest people get displaced, the immigrants become richer and ordinary folks head to anywhere they can afford a house.
But helping the health outcomes of the poorest people? No idea.
Smoking is reducing as the older generations die off. Hopefully the younger ones don’t pick up deadlier vices.
The world waits to see how the labour market changes at the low end.
Why do people think Mali is handsome? Defs not!
“or does that still belong to NSW or Vic Greens who are on par on total numbers but in larger parliaments?”
The Greens won 4 seats in 2022 in Victoria in a 88 seat Parliament. NSW has been 3 max in a similarly large parliament.
Queensland Liberals when Bjelke-Petersen kicked them out of the Coalition in the 80’s? (joke answer).
More serious answer is that there was a third party in Victoria at the 1952 election that resulted from the Liberals splitting with former leader Thomas Hollway, and his Electoral Reform League won 4/65 seats, that might be the closest, which would be exceeded if One Nation does end up winning 4/47 in SA.
Of course in true Third Party on the right fashion, it changed its name to the Victorian Liberals and lost them all at the next election in 1955, mainly because Labor had an even bigger split.
Dingbot
“ Why do people think Mali is handsome? Defs not!”
The newspaper photo of him shirtless in the pool is still in a few work cubicles.
He looks a bit like Lurch to me but what do I know?
I believe the cases of Hammond and Ngadjuri demonstrate ONP’s winning formula: pushing the Liberal to third place in their own strongholds, where the Liberal candidate would likely have been the Condorcet winner. I predict a significant increase in future Australian elections where instant-runoff voting fails to elect the Condorcet winner, as Hammond and Ngadjuri exemplify the polarized voter structure that this voting method struggles with – a pattern I expect to become increasingly common in Liberal-held seats.
What’s the bet that one of the priorities of David Paton, the new One Nation member for Ngadjuri, is to try and get the electorate name changed back. He already keeps insisting on still referring to it as Frome.
William
Any pattern to how the late votes are trending?
Labor
Lib
ON
Can’t tell?
I’ll cook up an answer to that for the post I’ll put up (much) later this evening.
Wat
“ He already keeps insisting on still referring to it as Frome.”
No way? Isn’t that contempt of parliament of some description?
If he doesn’t like it then he can make a formal suggestion to the ECSA to change it back to Frome just like everyone else and let them go through the legal process for that.
Otherwise he’s just being like a 5-year-old throwing a tantrum about being made to eat vegetables. Or otherwise, what? Does it physically hurt him to say the word “Ngadjuri”? It’s pronounced “Nuh-joo-ree” and- oh dots are starting to be connected here…
Why are the Liberals holding Morphett? And why did they also fare well in Bragg? What demographics help the Liberals in these 2 seats despite the wipeout? I don’t get it, especially in the case of Morphett. Is the MP highly regarded there or did Labor put no effort into the seat?
Actually, listening to otherwise good Australian politics commentators on YouTube have the name Ngadjuri come up and saying something along the lines of “I’m not even going to try to pronounce that” has been very grating. No, you should try. Just google “How to pronounce Ngadjuri” and you’ll see a link to a site which both spells it out phonetically and has a sound recording of someone saying it that you can listen to. It’s not actually hard to pronounce, it’s just spelled in a way that looks unusual in English.
Diogenes @ #178 Sunday, March 22nd, 2026 – 8:01 pm
I was going to ask this afternoon, how long it would take for a Pauline pawn to agitate to change the indigenous name of an electorate if they won one.
Even quicker than I thought.
Teh Drewski The Labor vote is down on the primary vote, it is the 2PP vote that has given them a big win. Starmer’s Labour party won a big landslide in 2024 but has been leaking votes to the Greens and a bit to Reform not dissimilar to Labor losses to the Greens and One Nation. 2PP in Australia though ensures Green voters still end up voting Labor on preferences. In the UK too Reform have overtaken the Tories as One Nation have overtaken the Coalition parties in Australia on the primary vote. However the Australian 2PP system has also ensured the Liberals are likely to just about still win more seats than One Nation in South Australia but in the UK it would require anti Reform tactical votes for other parties in seats Reform are targeting to defeat Reform
@Daniel T at 8:22pm
I think Morphett and Bragg (along with Heysen) are Adelaide’s state “Teal” seats. Very reluctant to vote Labor, but can’t bear One Nation, and from what I gather they have strong local Moderate Liberal sitting members (?)
With no Teals running there, seems they’re holding on to the Liberals.
@Wat Tyler at 8:26pm
Deep down One Nation probably want to go the full Joh Bjelke-Petersen and call it the “District of Mr. Witchetty Grub” but South Australians have hopefully not gone that far as to tolerate that.
Kirksdarke. So a fair assessment would be that Morphett is basically Goldstein and Bragg is Kooyong pretty much?
The demographics of Morphett and Brighton/Sandringham are awfully similar I read.
@William Bowe – thanks for the update on Morphett. I`m not surprised at all – good, hardworking local member.
His electorate includes beach areas like Glenelg that were hit hard by the toxic algae disaster and yes, some people are angry that it took so long for acknowledgement by our State Government.
Federal member for Boothby Louise Miller-Frost has her office just down the road from the disaster and the Glenelg locals noted that she was silent until Murray Watt came here. I don`t care what Labor excuse makers say – these kinds of things are noted by an electorate.
@Patrick Bateman – I`m not against needed development but increasingly disappointed with a State Labor Govt that is losing sight of what makes our city and its built environs/natural environs unique in terms of quality of life. That still counts in a civilised society.
More could be done by the Mali Govt to let all the pro-concrete/pro-uglification by higher and higher density developer crew know that public policy is made for the people of a state. The towers the developers here want to build and the multi-level apartments they are building usually have nothing in common with those that were built in the East End a while ago, for example – they integrate with the surrounds.
The aggressive developer lobby are pushing towers for the real upper end of society – they are not providing housing to relieve the shortage of the general population. As usual speculation, movement of capital and tax benefits play a significant role.
As for the idea we can`t have beautiful suburbs with bird and other life and trees/vegetation that sustain eco-systems because there are expensive heritage areas close to the city that do the same and have done since their inception – the two are compatible.
`Shake and bake boxes` are being built after many suburban houses everywhere with distinct architectural styles (the variety is not only in affluent areas) have been bulldozed and trees/vegetation destroyed. Replaced by concrete and fake grass.
We have never heard so much about the importance of environmental issues from governments and politicians yet this trend can be ignored – apparently.
In the suburbs consortiums of developers are buying up distinctive houses everywhere, destroying them and building the white board, poorly constructed, indistinct dwellings that have also removed grass and trees to give one uglification example.
There are also cases of dwellings bought and left to rot including on behalf of buyers who don`t qualify to purchase existing dwellings and so can build a new one later. It is the role of our state government to be interested in these issues and do more to regulate them.
As for the idea that Jack Batty can be dismissed because he started out as a solicitor and then went into politics – then that can be applied to the not uncommon number of Labor politicians who were lawyers before they entered politics.
He represents his electorate well including the older women associated with the war veterans who are being turfed out of their home because they don`t measure up to the wealthy people who will live in the new high rise development near Victoria Racecourse.
The aforementioned Labor lawyers include Julia Gillard who went straight into Labor politics from a law firm. Let`s not forget Albo who never had a job outside going straight into Labor Party employment after uni.
The Liberal Party candidates in this State Election mostly look similar to the Labor Party candidates including those who were elected for the first time. Such as lawyer Alice Rolls. Even then the Liberal Party had 3 candidates who were of Indian ethnicity and are immigrants.
@Daniel T
Pretty much. Just with Adelaide being about 4 times smaller than Melbourne their Federal districts cover too many other suburbs for a clear Teal campaigner that can beat the Liberals and Labor. But their state districts check out with the similarities.
Interesting that there wasn’t any prominent Teal candidates as far as I can tell for the SA election. Seems that they’re pretty happy with Peter Mali on his environmental/renewable energy policies so far.
Having been born, educated and starting my working life in Adelaide, I continue to take an interest in SA even 45 years on
Noting that this site brings forward the usual suspects telling us how Labor has been crushed by (either) the Greens or Hanson – and continuing to electioneer despite the results being in
To me, this result is a testament to Don Dunstan (who I knew personally along with Gretel and then Adele) who transformed SA
And this is what we see today
In regard Elizabeth, this was a Playford Housing Trust suburb in the days when GMH moved from Port Road to Elizabeth – and there was Weapons Research
It was a suburb you drove past to get to the Barossa, never stopping
Altho Salisbury had a side in District Cricket so we had to go there for that reason
Despite the passage of time I would imagine the shutting of vehicle building industry still resonates in that region – because whereas education has made its mark elsewhere, perhaps not so in Elizabeth and surrounding suburbs, so as in the UK entrenched disadvantage (also in the rust bucket States of America)
And this is where we see the protest vote which has given us Brexit and Trump
The demise of the Liberal Party of Playford is noted
It amuses me to think that David Paton will now be referred to as the Member for Ngadjuri every sitting day for the next four years 🙂
That might get under his skin during question time.
I posted this on the wrong thread:
—
I’ve questions for William, or anyone really, about the numbers in the opening table here:
https://pollbludger.net/sa2026/Results/
I’m trying to wrap my head around the column labelled “Swing”.
Q1: Should that column sum to zero? The sum of positive swings is 25.4%. The negatives sum to -20.2%.
Q2: Assuming the column should sum to zero, who lost the other 5.2%? Maybe some parties aren’t in it this time round, or maybe the three parties with no swing recorded in the table lost a combined 5.2% when compared with their previous result? (And I’ve just thought of this, maybe the column will sum to zero when all the votes have been counted, and the final Swing isn’t known yet.)
Also, did Angus Taylor turn up during hustings at all? If so, seems like he was largely ignored.
David
Despite the passage of time I would imagine the shutting of vehicle building industry still resonates in that region – because whereas education has made its mark elsewhere, perhaps not so in Elizabeth and surrounding suburbs, so as in the UK entrenched disadvantage (also in the rust bucket States of America)
+++++++++
That world is gone. Even if Adelaide could truly become a centre of weapons manufacturing and ship building, the idea that the people of Elizabeth are ever going to benefit from that is daft.
People need basic education. Basic health needs met. The ability to function in broader society.
If it was in my gift, I would put Elizabeth through a bulldozer and sell the newly flattened blocks to middle class people, and change the names too. In recent years the middle class master planned template of central lake, small Coles or Woolies, schools and medical stuff put at the heart of the development, and with good enough public transport (which Elizabeth certainly has) , has made the idea of suburban sprawl more palatable.
Liberals and NIMBYs have always been hypocrites. Happy to destroy farms in the South East, or even the potential wine country, in the name of urban expansion.
JM
Didn’t see him. Prob not invited. State Libs weren’t overly thrilled with the performance of the fed Libs at the start of the campaign.
Do the poor people get time to leave before their houses are demolished for the middle class heat trap, no tree utopia’s or are they bulldozed along with them?
Kirsdarke says:
Sunday, March 22, 2026 at 7:28 pm
Queensland Liberals when Bjelke-Petersen kicked them out of the Coalition in the 80’s? (joke answer).
中华人民共和国
Actually the Liberals tore up the Coalition Agreement (sounds familiar) with Terry White as their then leader. After the ‘83 State Election, Don “Shady” Lane and Brian Austin defected from the Liberals to the Nationals to give Joh a majority. They retained their Ministries as a result. Don Lane was later jailed because of corruption post following the Fitzgerald Inquiry.
The Liberals actually split from the Nats on the issue of a Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee which Labor had pushed for many years but Joh refused.
Some of the Liberals of old had some scruples. They would have known the poison One Nation is to our Nation and like Labor put One Nation last. Sadly the Liberals have lost any ticker in that regard and deserve to be consigned to history.
Also to the person who said they now live in “one of the safest Labor seats now” is that Waite? And if so what evidence is there to suggest Waite is now one of the “safest”?
Pretty sure it’s safe now but not safer than the seats in the north of Adelaide
We don’t have the scope here to pierce the fog that holds back Elizabeth and some surrounds. Like other lower socioeconomic areas I’ve worked in, ive witnessed good things and some truly horrifying things.
Money is going into there. The hospital is good. Bulldozers might come in handy but some areas are just fine – so long as the money keeps flowing to health, education, police and safety nets.
And, ofcourse, two of the biggest names in Australian rocknroll came from there.