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Saturday night
A batch of postals in Narungga broke 21-18 in favour of One Nation over Liberal, putting their lead at 47 – which is significant because it may well conclude the count (notwithstanding that a solitary vote at the Moonta booth got shifted from One Nation to Labor, for one reason or another). The deadline for late arrival of postals was the close of business yesterday, and full preference distributions will apparently begin in some cases on Monday. SUNDAY MORNING UPDATE: The Kadina EVC tally has been revised to remove 21 votes from One Nation, reducing their lead to 26, which together with the Moonta change suggests we may not be done with rechecking. Heysen’s small number of Electoral Visitor/Mobile Declaration Votes increased the Liberal lead over Labor from 264 to 288, but there remain uncounted vote categories in that case. Nothing worth noting changed in Morphett, and we’re closing in on a week since a new vote got added to the count in MacKillop.
Friday night
ECSA’s preference throw between One Nation and Labor finally swung into action in Hammond today, and it can now be confirmed as One Nation’s second seat, with the two parties evenly placed on the primary vote and One Nation getting about 60% of preferences. Yesterday I registered surprise that the number of “polling day declaration votes” was as high as 1698 – I’m not told this was very likely a data entry error and these votes belong in a different category (polling day absent ordinary votes would be my guess).
With all sorts of new vote types added to the count, One Nation’s lead over Liberal in Narungga today was cut from 147 to 46, almost entirely as a result of a 159-57 break in electoral visitor/mobile declaration votes. I imagine that doesn’t leave much: probably only one last batch of postals. Each of the three batches of these has slightly favoured the Liberals, in slightly dimishing degree: 512-457 on Wednesday, 598-572 on Thursday and 220-214 today.
Similarly, various categories of vote were added in Morphett, suggesting that loose ends are now being tied up and we are near a final result, leaving the trailing candidate hoping for some sort of anomaly turning up in the full preference distribution. In this case it’s Liberal member Stephen Patterson, whose deficit against Labor candidate Toby Priest narrowed today from 293 to 259.
The Liberal lead over Labor in Heysen is out from 156 to 254 after they got the better of a 1054-1010 split in early voting absents broke 1054-1010 and 250-186 from a second batch of postals. That probably sees off any chance of a Labor win, and my system is the only thing extant that’s allowing for the possibility of preferences allowing the Greens to overhaul first Labor and then Liberal.
A curiosity of the past week has been the lack of any progress in the count for MacKillop, which my system rates an almost but not quite certain One Nation win over the Liberals. Nothing has been added since the polling booths and early voting centre counts were completed, which was probably on Sunday or Monday.
My system has uncalled Light, where Labor’s win probability fell fractionally below the 99% threshold after postals 1016-939 in favour of One Nation. Labor leads by 538 votes though, and by this stage of the cuont my system is allowing for more outstanding votes than we are actually likely to get.
Thursday night
Disappointingly, there is still no sign of the Labor-versus-One Nation count that could settle the issue as to which of the two will win Hammond. There were around 3000 postals and “polling day declaration votes” (which turn out not to be what I thought they were, since otherwise there would not have been 1698 of them) and they leave the two almost dead level on first preferences. It can thus be inferred that whoever gets the most preferences will very likely win the seat. The only other regional seat with a Labor-versus-One Nation two-candidate count is Ngadjuri, and in that case One Nation is getting about 60% of them. The main difference between the two is that 10.0% of the vote in Hammond has gone to Airlie Keen, whose how-to-vote card had Liberal second, One Nation sixth and Labor second last. So it seems unlikely that the preference flow here will be radically different from Ngadjuri, which makes me confident in my system’s assessment that One Nation will very likely win the seat.
The Liberal lead over Labor on the two-candidate count in Heysen increased from 54 to 156 after the first batch of postals broke 911-576 to Liberal and the first batch of absents broke 928-704 to Labor. The Greens did poorly on postals, as always, and causing their deficit against Labor on first preferences to increase from 0.9% to 1.6%, which they will need to close on preferences, three quarters of which will be from One Nation, to make the final count against the Liberals. The most proximate useful example I can find from the federal election is the seat of Adelaide, where the Greens got 20.2% of preferences when One Nation was excluded (this included One Nation’s 4.02% primary vote and another 1.76% they picked up on preferences) and Labor got 17.64%. It is for this sort of reason that my three-candidate estimates are giving the Greens an even money chance of closing the gap, but things may be very different in the context of a greatly increased One Nation vote. Whether they would be better placed than Labor to defeat the Liberals at the final count is another open question. I would also reiterate my point about ECSA persisting with a Liberal-Labor two-candidate count and the likelihood that they have made an informed decision in doing so.
In Morphett, Labor candidate Toby Priest’s lead over Liberal incumbent Stephen Patterson increased today from 34 to 293 after a second batch of polling day absents broke 592-459 and a first batch of early voting absents broke 553-427. To close the gap, Patterson will need outstanding two-thirds of postals to split about 57-43 in his favour, as compared with the 53-47 he got from the first batch, and to break even on whatever else remains oustanding.
A second batch of postals in Narungga behaved similarly to the first in breaking 598-572 in favour of Liberal over One Nation, reducing the latter’s lead from 173 to 147. However, the Liberals now have less runway in terms of postals, each of the two batches having accounted for about a third of what’s likely to be the total, and federal precedent suggests absents are more likely to favour One Nation.
Wednesday night
Counting today progressed for the first time (at least out of seats I’ve been watching closely) beyond election day and pre-poll voting. Antony Green relates that ECSA will shortly begin a Labor-versus-independent count in Kavel and a One Nation-versus-Labor count in Hammond “after testing how preferences are flowing from third and fourth placed candidates”, which in both cases is consistent with the conclusions of my system’s preference estimates. At some point tomorrow, my projections in these seats will flip from using these speculative estimates to ones based on the fresh two-candidate counts. As things stand, my system rates it likely but not certain that independent Matt Schultz will prevail in Kavel and Robert Rylance of One Nation will do so in Hammond. UPDATE: Having thought about that more carefully, ECSA is essentially telling us Matt Schultz is going to win in Kavel – his issue was whether he survived to the final count, which ECSA plainly thinks he will. The progress of late counting in these seats has not been of particular interest, as the flow of preferences is almost certainly the black box that holds the secret of the results.
After my system spent the days after the election calling Narungga for One Nation candidate Chantelle Thomas, it is now clear that the result will in fact be extremely close between Thomas and Liberal candidate Tania Stock, as per the consistent view of the ABC. The two-candidate count has caught up with the first preference count and Thomas leads 173. Stock made up 55 on the first batch of postals, which should account for about a third of them. In conventional contests, late-arriving postals tend to be better for Labor then earlier ones, but I cannot offer a view on what pattern they follow between Liberal and One Nation, if any. The biggest categories of vote that remain entirely uncounted are absents and out-of-district early votes, on which One Nation tends to do better than the Liberals, although this can vary according to local circumstance. So the best I can offer is the reliable stand-by that you’d rather be ahead than behind.
Today’s counting in Morphett turned a four-vote lead for Liberal member Stephen Patterson to a 34-vote lead for Labor candidate Toby Priest, with postals favouring Patterson 512-452, absents favouring Priest 225-158, and Priest gaining a net 29 votes on rechecking of pre-polls. The good news for Patterson is that there should be another 2000 or so postals to come, though as noted, the first batch is typically the best for Liberal candidates. Rechecking Heysen today cut the Liberal lead over Labor in the two-candidate count from 69 to 54, but there are as yet no non-ordinary vote types. So far as my results system is concerned, the bigger question is whether the Greens can overtake Labor and make the final count. The projection in my system giving the edge to the Greens is based on fairly careful observation of historic precedents, but it seems to be a minority view. It could be significant that there has been no suggestion from ECSA that they are considering pulling their Liberal-Labor count, as they may well know something about how preferences are actually flowing that I don’t.
Tuesday night
I’ve made two significant changes to my results system: widened its error margins so it will be more conservative in calling seats, and made estimated preference splits between Liberal and One Nation more favourable to the former, which no brings my estimates closer into line with the ABC’s. These factors have as much weight as the progress of today’s counting in the update that follows.
The fresh One Nation-versus-Liberal preference count in Narungga, which so far encompasses 10 of its 33 booths, had a lot to do with my decision to wind back my estimates of One Nation preference flows: I formerly had One Nation leading 55-45 based on estimates, but applying real-world preference data winds it back to 51.2-47.8. Unlike the ABC’s, my system is still calling the seat for One Nation, but I’m slightly nervous about this. One Nation has been downgraded from winner to strong favourite in MacKillop, which is due to the aforementioned changes to my system rather than the One Nation-Liberal two-candidate count, of which we are yet to see any results.
For the same reason, my One Nation win probability in Hammond, which was not quite being called before, has been dialled back slightly while remaining over 90%. This is one of four seats where there is no indication of a fresh two-candidate count: ECSA advised yesterday that in these seats it was “analysing where certain preferences may flow to be in a position to make a call”, though in the case of Hammond it’s difficult to say how the final count could be anything other than One Nation versus Labor.
The progress of today’s check count in the one conventional in-doubt seat, Morphett, offers a useful case study of the savings provision in action. Changes to the various candidate’s primary vote tallies were in no case greater than five, but on the two-candidate preferred count, Labor and Liberal were both up by about the same amount – 83 and 79 votes respectively. It would explain a lot if most of these were saved one-only One Nation votes, divided evenly between the two main contenders as per the party’s registered tickets.
Rechecking today in Heysen offered little insight into the key question of whether Labor or the Greens will make the final count against Liberal member Josh Teague, and what chance the Greens will have of prevailing if it’s them who make it. If they don’t, the two-candidate count tells us Teague holds a narrow lead over Labor that I would think likely to survive late counting. We are similarly none the wiser in Kavel, where the result depends on an order of candidate exclusion, such that minor changes in the various candidates’ first preference shares offer little insight into the like result.
The fresh Labor-versus-One Nation preference count in Light has removed that seat from the doubtful column, with Labor headed for a clear win with help from a strong flow of Liberal preferences. Casey Briggs of the ABC relates that ECSA has done “an indicative preference throw in the early voting centre in Finniss to identify if Lou Nicholson will be overtaken by Labor”. This found that she gained rather than lost votes relative to Labor on preferences, which eliminate any suggestion that Labor might thwart her. So I’ll be removing those two seats from my watch list.
Monday night
Since most of the doubtful seats are so for the want of an appropriate preference count rather than because we know for a fact that they are close, today’s rechecking and gap-filling did not tell us anything terribly momentous. The one case that might have been an exception is the conventional Labor-versus-Liberal contest of Morphett, but all we saw there today were minor changes to the existing count from rechecking.
ECSA has now scrubbed the results of 33 redundant two-candidate preferred counts as it moves into the check count phase, most or perhaps all of which it ceased updating after election night. As well as rechecked primary votes, we are now seeing fresh two-candidate counts with appropriate candidate pairings, only 14 of which are unchanged from those used on election night. Most importantly, this means we will soon be seeing Liberal-versus-One Nation results in Narungga and Light and an independent-versus-One Nation count in Stuart, though by my and the ABC’s system called the latter for Geoff Brock today after he received 59.2% of first preferences out of the 6134 added from the Port Pirie early voting centre. So far though, fresh TCP count figures have only appeared in a handful of booths in seats where the winner is not in doubt. There are four exceptions where new counts will not be conducted as it remains unclear as to who the two leading candidates will be, each involving in-doubt seats: Finniss, Hammond, Kavel and Ngadjuri (though my system is calling the first of these for the independent, a situation I explained at length in yesterday’s update).
I posted a fairly detailed comment in this post’s discussion thread on the question of savings provisions, which has generated some further commentary involving Antony Green among others. This will cause One Nation votes that numbered one only box to remain in the count with their preferences allocated as per a ticket pre-registered by the party. The provision is obviously not specific to One Nation, but is particularly salient in their case as quite a few of their voters apparently voted in this fashion after misinterpreting the how-to-vote card. This will result in votes that are currently being excluded from two-candidate counts to be admitted during the check counts, but as I explain in the comment, I don’t expect this to amount to much. Nor do I buy the idea that One Nation has perpetrated some great outrage by making use of the provision, as argued by both major parties and an editorial in The Advertiser this morning.
If you’re a Crikey subscriber, you might care to note my commentary piece in today’s edition.
Sunday night
There are eight seats whose late counting I’ve identified as worth following, though it’s more possible that seats that are currently off the radar will be on it if fresh two-candidate counts and other quirks of late counting throw up surprises. In a lot of these cases the incremental back and forth of late counting will actually be beside the point: what are really needed are two-candidate counts for the appropriate candidate pairs, and the Electoral Commission is holding off making announcements on that score until the counting of early voting centres, of which four are still to report first preferences after counting on Sunday, are concluded. No new votes were added today in Heysen and Light, and only 46 remote mobile booth votes were added in Stuart, so there is nothing on those below.
Morphett. My system was calling this for Labor on the night (not sure about the ABC’s), but that changed today when the seat’s early voting centre, which added 6861 votes to the 8998 votes cast on election day, recorded only a 1.6% swing to Labor compared with 7.7% for the election day votes. I should stress here that the historic data for early voting centres that is used as the basis for such calculations is imprecise, because results for early voting centres were not actually published in 2022 – they were bundled together with postals, absente and everything else as “declaration votes”, and I and my ABC equivalent had to find a way to estimate how they all broke down. In any case, Liberal incumbent Stephen Patterson now leads Labor candidate Toby Priest by 12 votes. I would usually expect postals to cause late counting to favour the Liberals, but that’s by no means certain.
Narungga. My system is calling this for One Nation’s Chantelle Thomas, while the ABC’s projects a tight race between Thomas and Liberal candidate Tania Stock. As of a few minutes ago, this was because my system had Stock falling out of the preference count before independent incumbent Fraser Ellis, which I now recognise was mistaken because it failed to factor in that Labor had Ellis last on its how-to-vote cards. It now does so for a different reason, which is that the ABC’s estimate of how preference will split between Thomas and Stock are a lot more favourable to Stock than mine are. No doubt the ABC expects a higher adherence of Ellis voters to the how-to-vote card, which has Stock second. Only a fresh TCP count will tell.
Finniss. I’m reasonably comfortable with my system’s prediction of independent Lou Nicholson as the winner here, but it needs watching because the seat is something of a special case so far as my results system is concerned. This is because it’s a three-candidate model and here we have a result that may be decided by who finishes third and fourth. The leaders on the primary vote are Liberal incumbent David Basham on 27.0% and One Nation’s Greg Powell on 22.0%, followed by Nicholson on 19.3% and Labor on 17.3%. The latter gap narrowed today with the addition of the seat’s early voting centre, from 20.5% to 17.7% yesterday to 19.3% to 18.0%, and independents don’t usually do well on postals, none of which have been counted yet. However, the main factor here is likely to be preferences, notably from the Greens on 6.4% and independent Bron Lewis on 4.3%, and I still think it likely these will keep Nicholson ahead. The Greens’ how-to-vote card had Nicholson second, and she got more than twice as many preferences from the Greens as Labor did in 2022. Preferences from independents tend to favour each other, barring strong ideological differences that don’t appear to apply in this case. If she does remain ahead of Labor, she will surely get enough of their preferences to move to One Nation and make the final count against the Liberals. Having looked at this carefully for the first time, I now believe I’m short-changing Nicholson on One Nation preferences — I have splitting 60-40 in favour of Liberal, when they went 78-22 the other way in 2022, albeit that this was with One Nation running a how-to-vote card than favoured her rather than an open ticket as per this time. Even with the 60-40 flow, I’m still getting Nicholson defeating the Liberal by 53.8-46.2 at the final count.
Hammond. The addition of the seat’s early voting centre didn’t fundamentally change the situation here, which is One Nation will win at the final count over Labor unless my preference estimates are substantially awry, which we won’t know about without a fresh TCP count.
Ngadjuri. I’ve been calling this for One Nation’s David Paton all along, but the ABC only did so today after a weak result for Liberal member Penny Pratt from the Two Wells early voting centre caused her to fall behind Labor in its preference projection, which my system was doing because it was estimating weaker preference flows to Liberal. This has caused it to be the first seat projected by the ABC as a One Nation win, and I’ll be having no more to say about it unless late counting turns up some manner of surprise.
UPDATE: It’s been noted that I missed Kavel, where my system swung yesterday from favouring Labor to independent Matt Schultz, presumably because the latter had a strong result at the Mount Barker early voting centre. Ultimately though, this is one that’s going to require a full distribution of preferences before we can really be sure of anything. I’ll discuss the situation in greater detail in tonight’s update.
If Marshall had been judged only on the Covid response he’d have been returned easily.
Alas voters had the temerity to remember everything else his government did while in power.
Showson (2.14), I totally agree with all of that. But I dont believe it factored in the election.
Marshall fell into the premiership after 16 years of ALP government. He wasnt particularly popular nor engaging. I commented that his appearance was unfortunate in that it always looked like he was trying to stay awake. There were ramping and ambulance arrival time issues. More than a few but fairly minor scandals (iirc) and the background of changes to the Liberal membership and factions.
To me, none of that explains the big loss he and the Libs suffered in 2022. So why? I dunno. Perhaps it just ended up a popularity contest.
@Team Katich at 2:32pm
Impact of Federal politics perhaps?
The Federal election was held only 2 months later after all.
Based on the results of the state election this is what my prediction is for South Australia in the 2028 Australian federal election:
Adelaide: 18% ALP vs LIB
Barker: 2% PHON vs LIB
Boothby: 12% ALP vs LIB
Grey: 3% PHON vs ALP
Hindmarsh: 11% ALP vs PHON
Kingston: 9% ALP vs PHON
Makin: 10% ALP vs PHON
Mayo: 6.5% CA vs PHON
Spence: 5% ALP vs PHON
Sturt: 8% ALP vs LIB
Marshall didn’t seem like he wanted the job. He let Spurrier and Stevens basically run the state for years and then ramping killed him. And he was a bit of a party boy.
He did some good stuff like Lot 14.
Allegedly after his concession speech he said to his advisors “Now get me the fuck out of here.”
Mali has given him a trade job in New York.
What exactly was the Liberal’s second term agenda at the 2022 election? Turn more resivours into recreational facilities?
Well, remember there was a 2pp swing to Labor at the 2018 election. The Liberals won thanks to a redistribution that turned Colton, Elder, and Newland into marginal Liberal seats, and SA Best performing well enough to leak some preferences from swing voters to the Liberals while not well enough to win seats themselves.
At this election One Nation did not preference either Liberal or Labor so the high One Nation vote didn’t help the Liberals the way the high SA Best vote helped them in 2018.
Which is hilarious because the Liberals opposed the new RAH which enabled Lot 14.
SA doesn’t have a makeup public holiday for ANZAC Day which falls on a Saturday.
So unfair!
SO
Not sure what’s happening with the National Indigenous art gallery.
Thomas Brian Muttersays:
Monday, March 23, 2026 at 2:41 pm
”
Thanks.
Apologies if this has already been noted elsewhere.
Just reading a Twitter thread from Kevin Bonham about the TCP and its’ presentation on the ECSA website. Can’t seem to post an image.
https://x.com/kevinbonham/status/2035696117514719554
I’m increasingly having issue with the entire TCP undertaking, across jurisdictions. Seriously, what is the VICEC going to do in November.
The ECSA does itself absolutely no favours by presenting information that could not unreasonably be interpreted as not quite correct.
Has anyone noticed that before they stopped counting the statewide 2PP vote that the margin of error was almost that of the 2019 election in terms of the polls compared to the actual result (about 2.5% more Liberal)?
From The Advertiser, quoted up thread by Diogenes:
This isn’t quite right. One-only votes are not being classified as informal — they are being included in the primary vote count as first preferences, but excluded from the notional two-candidate count. So they should register as anomalies between the number of formal votes in the first preference count and the number of votes in the TCP count, to be rectified in the check count, at which point they will be added to the TCP count if there’s a registered ticket or reassigned to the informal pile if there isn’t.
To the extent that this will largely be One Nation votes, it means … not much really. One Nation has registered its tickets in such a way that they will divide evenly between ALP in LIB in seats where those are the candidates it comes down to, which means their inclusion won’t rock the dial. Where there’s an independent in the TCP count though, it may mean a small fillip for whichever candidate is favoured by the registered ON ticket, assuming one has been.
Only in the seats where the TCP counts include ON will it make any difference to the current assessment of how One Nation are doing — in those cases, ON votes that are currently in the “undetermined” pile for TCP purposes will be admitted as ON TCP votes during the check count. But this doesn’t matter all, because ON was only included in four of the TCP counts, none of which involves seat that are in doubt, and two of which have been scrapped on the grounds that the wrong candidates were picked.
Wherever the TCP count has either been scrapped or isn’t useful in projecting the actual result, I and the ABC will be making projections based off first preference vote totals that do include one-only votes. The only anomaly here is that some of those votes will be for candidates who didn’t have a “savings” ticket registered, which evidently doesn’t apply to One Nation.
Personally, I’m not greatly scandalised by the fact that One Nation had one-only HTVs while registering savings tickets. The Advertiser has bought the major parties’ line that it was deceitful of One Nation to do this while telling people that preferences were their own decision. But One Nation’s cards correctly instructed people to fill out all the boxes. I hardly think that declining to make a recommendation obliges them to reject the opportunity to have some of their votes saved. You could argue that they should have made their savings ticket public, but for me the real puzzle here is that the onus to publish them doesn’t lie with ECSA.
I think ECSA would do itself a favour by planning out a timetable in which they’ll figure out the relevant 2cp’s in the following weeks, given how a lot of seats are running on estimates.
I appreciated it from the AEC when they publicly announced what they planned to do with awkward seats like Calwell and Bendigo.
Thanks William. It seems I now need a degree in political science and maths to understand your explanation (despite having 2 degrees and 2 diplomas and federal cabinet in security clearance for 12 years). Maybe a flow chart may assist.
I do not understand the logic behind Mr Bowe’e explanation above (not that I doubt he is correct).
If the just vote 1 votes are saved by the saving provision relating to registered tickets (a new one itself on me, is this the case elsewhere?) why are they being initially included as formal first preference votes before there is a check to see if there is a registered ticket or not? Is there more than one relevant savings provision?
If there is not a registered ticket, are the just vote 1 votes then subtracted from the primary vote count, or does the anomaly just carry through to the end of counting?
Any word on when Hammond will be called?
I’m looking at Narungga. Currently ON on 38.6 and Liberal on 22.2 and these will be final 2 given most other groups have preferenced Liberal above ex Liberal Fraser Ellis. 73% counted so postals, absents etc will probably add another 15% or more.
If the current % is maintained Liberals need 71% of preferences to win. All other groups {c 38%} except Family First {1.3%} have suggested preferences to Liberal ahead of ON.
Given 17.4% are Labor and Greens which will run heavily against ON and 17.5% is ex Liberal Ellis I would think 71% is eminently doabable.
No reason to think that Liberals will do worse on absent and postal.
Yes, thanks William. What you wrote is clear enough to me, and you saved me the effort of a long explanatory post along the same lines.
Diogenes and Showson are essentially right about Marshall. He was affable and there was no great feeling against him, but he was gifted the 2018 election by a very favourable redistribution, and as premier he was pretty much a cipher. He abdicated all responsibility during covid to Spurrier and Stevens, and was seen as an ineffectual do-nothing.
William is correct on the saving provision for 1 only votes in House of Assembly. The votes are counted as valid in first count because ECSA will know that saving preference card has been lodged.
I will put good money on the law being changed to require disclosure of these Saving Preferences.
I understand the ECSA doesn’t wont to publicise this provision because no one is allowed to encourage such a vote.
One place where it might make a difference is in Light. ON had at least 107 of these 1 only votes in the Prepoll count {about 40% of likely final votes}. That suggests about 270 likely in total.
If ON win {possible if postal plus absent favour them slightly} by less than 270, the saving provision {and ON lodging their card} will have made the difference.
I guess because there usually is one and including them will tend to make the result more rather than less accurate. And I guess the reason there is no check in the initial count is that it would be asking too much of the temporary staff in charge at the booths. No, this doesn’t happen elsewhere. One-only vote, hello informal pile.
I’m assuming there are a number of 2PP counts between Liberal and Labor for ON votes as the Electoral Commission has wrongly chosen Liberal Labor rather than ON Labor in all of the northern metro seats and probably many others. Although I guess these have not been uploaded by ECSA. Relevant scrutineers should have them
For Light in one booth the split of ON 270 votes from the Saturday votes was 147 to Liberal and 123 to Labor. 54.4% to Liberal.
ECSA advises we will have results “shortly” on rethrows everywhere the original count has been scrapped except Finniss, Hammond, Kavel and Ngadjuri.
I wrote this comment on The Advertiser’s article on Facebook:
“Having read the story in the print edition, I have to say this is a poor critique for several reasons:
1. Voters are always told to number all the boxes for the lower house.
2. This has been the case for every SA and federal election for decades.
3. Other candidates did the same thing and the article made no mention of them. Open tickets have always existed.
4. The One Nation handouts I saw, and the one in the picture above, said to number all the boxes, not just 1. If there were others that didn’t, show us a picture.
5. The tickets lodged split evenly between Labor & Liberal (no mention of where other candidates slotted in), so it was not a hidden preference deal. It was a hidden non-preference deal. For the small minority who failed to number the boxes as they should, their preferences were not all sent in one direction as they would for those who only wrote 1 for other candidates. Far from manipulating the outcome, they are damping the effect, deliberately not pushing the needle either way, at least in Labor/Liberal contests.
6. The article failed to note that this was about the lower house. A relevant point because the upper house can be numbered with just 1, some parties did this while others suggested a few preferences. This is a bit different from the federal election and a lot different from both state & federal elections over 10 years ago, where a single 1 above the line would correspond to a full ticket (not secret) supplied by the party.
I expect there will be enough real reasons to criticise One Nation in SA as time goes on. This is not one of them.”
To which I would add…
I like the savings provision, although I think it should exhaust rather than follow a ticket.
I get annoyed by false claims of “a vote for X is a vote for Y” and think there should be penalties for making them, BUT this is a rare case where a vote for one party becomes a vote for another party that the elector didn’t specify.
Only in SA, only when the elector fails to do as instructed, instead just doing number 1. Then only if their 1st preference is excluded (ON were in the last two in about half the seats). So in these rare cases, One Nation decided that they’d split evenly between the two majors (don’t know where others fit), which (if it’s a Labor/Lib contest at least) is like having them exhaust, eliminating the few votes worth of “a vote for ON is a vote for Y”.
No one should be complaining. Running such a non-story prominently in the Tiser is stupid when there was so much to report in this election.
In contrast, a vote for Labor or Liberal with only 1 (unlikely because the HTVs were clear), if they ran 3rd, WOULD be a vote for Liberal or ON (depending who was in the final count).
Why can’t SA state election voters just number all boxes, like everyone else?
Just numbering “1” and then having your ballot filled in isn’t a genuine savings provision*, it’s an automatic ballot paper completion service, where someone else does all the work.
I can kind of understand why such a thing exists but I’m not sure it should.
* A savings provision is where you’ve made a full (hopefully genuine) attempt at following the ballot paper instructions and likely accidentally, there’s a usually single error (eg. duplicated number or sequence mistake) and the provision kicks in and your ballot may be counted in some manner. Your ballot paper is being “saved” where otherwise it would be informal.
Like what is this –
https://www.ecsa.sa.gov.au/component/content/article/adelaide-electoral-district-candidates?catid=12:elections&Itemid=1001
Firstly the formatting of the sample ballot is different in each case. 3 of the 6 show full preferences. 2 of the 6 show 1 preference. 1 of the 6 show only the candidate’s square.
What??
Yeah they should tie it down to avoid confusion.
So, when is Hanson being sworn in as Premier of South Australia?
And who will her Deputy Premier be, let alone her Ministry?
Will they even reside in South Australia – which will be a saving because they can sell Parliament House and all other buildings government departments occupy?
Noting all the write up is about Hanson winning a handful of seats on the back of being racist.
It is time the Liberal Party afforded support to Labor when it comes to Hanson.
The SA saving provision is a good idea. There is often confusion about voting in various elections. People don’t always understand the rules. Eg for Legislative Council a 1 vote only above the line is valid but the vote exhausts after relevant group members are elected or excluded.
Many people from overseas are used to a 1 only vote being valid.
It is illegal to advertise or support such a vote. HTV cards are not allowed to suggest it.
The result is about 2% of votes that would otherwise be invalid are valid. What’s not to like about that. Helping people make a valid vote is important.
Also, anything that stokes the pernicious fallacy that “they distribute your preferences rather than you” should pretty much go. It might make sense from a theoretical point of view but if it doesn’t pass the coming sense test for the average voter it’s a problem
Shiftaling. Voters are instructed to fill out there own preferences, including in HTV cards that must fit the ECSA requirements. The ECSA lodged party HTV cards only fill in for people who dont understand the instructions and just put a 1 {or a X or tick}. It could be that the vote should exhaust – no doubt that that might also be discussed. But that would be seen/argued to assist the big parties to the detriment of minor parties.
Q: Marshall didn’t seem like he wanted the job.
I think after losing 4 members to entitlements rorting, his deputy to conflicts of interest etc… he just gave up. His heart wasn’t in that election campaign. They were a very inexperienced team and it showed from Day 01.
He left COVID to the experts, and as it turned out, he could rely on them to make excellent judgements. SA was a very safe place to ride out COVID.
The Indigenous Gallery was found to be undercosted (like the N-S Tunnel and the WOmens and Childrens) and put on hold. A matter of priorities I presume.
The savings provisions sound interesting, main thing is they apply to all parties that lodged the paperwork
It’s better than having a big pile of informal votes that were intended to be formal
Accepting that there were a number of 4 corner contests would doing 3CP counts in more seats speed things up?
As a theoretical voter, despite being told to mark every box, if I decide to mark my ballot paper with a single number “1”, that is an intentional act.
When the election official counts the ballot paper, they can only interpret what is given on said ballot paper. Not what might be or presumed to be. Just is.
A single number “1” on the ballot paper DOES NOT mean, without question, hand on heart, swear an oath in court, that the voter wishes to cast their vote as per the ECSA / party process that follows. It may mean that, but that’s not the same as ECSA saying “we’re going count your ballot paper as the sequence that the party’s directed us” to ensure formality.
Does every single voter who marks their SA state election ballot paper know that just marking “1” fills in the remainder of their ballot? Every single voter. Not some or most or many. Every and all.
I can almost guarantee that while legal, some of the illustrative HTV’s are skirting right to the border of nudging people to mark “1”, full well knowing what comes next. This is actually undermining the official instructions.
IF you want to have a system that counts a ballot paper in this “automated” way, then explicitly state it and offer it as an option alongside, DIY numbering. Upon a moment of reflection, that’s actually not the worst idea in the world.
Increasing formality is always important and ways of doing so should always be explored but someone who is NOT the voter “filling in” the voter’s ballot paper on a presumption (even if likely) is the wrong way.
Where there isn’t a near-certain top 2 but there is a near-certain top 3, I think doing 3CP would be the way to go.
My only time counting was in 2006. There were 6 candidates. We did primaries and 2CP by 8pm then went to the other room to help with the upper house.
If most booths in a seat can report their 3CP totals by 8:00 or 8:30, they could be added up, the 3rd place determined, the booths then told to distribute the 3rd place into 2CP. You could still have a winner by 9:30.
But someone who has been involved more recently may have more to say on that. Having 10 candidates would slow it down more.
While there was that fuss about One Nation’s open ticket, there was the more outrageous opposite issue, where some people were filling in the empty squares on the HTV, hoping to direct a few ON voters.
Thankyou William and Spence for your additional posts about the saving provision.
Online there was a photo of a ON HTV in the lower house with just a 1 next to the ON candidate.
Sounds like the ministry will be announced tomorrow.
Clancy and Brown to be elevated. Brown is really good, and everyone likes Clancy.
Boyer to get a promotion to an “economic portfolio” (not sure what that means) in exchange for Police
Kouts stays
Picton goes way down
Michaels left in disgust leaving one spot and Scriven seems on the outer.
I think that all the voters leaving crayons in the polling booths so the ON voters could put a number 1 was a bit much.
G. You are a well informed voter. The saving provision was to deal with a long term observation that despite the instructions not every gets it.
Publicising the option would cause it to be more widespread which would be seriously counter-productive. Like the now almost defunct Vote 1 above the line option for Senate and a lot of upper houses with party directed preferences. The abuse was legion with bogus groups popping up all over the place – ‘support smokers”, “no land tax”, stop immigration” etc which were directing preferences to selected parties.
Notable character actor Clancy Brown is getting elevated to cabinet?
Of course Koutsantonis stays. Unflushable. If he fails upwards into the Premiership one day, that’s going to be the best boost for the opposition (whether blue or orange) at the subsequent election ever.
Spence @ #89 Monday, March 23rd, 2026 – 7:05 pm
Even worse were the groups that pretended to be for a left wing cause but actually just directed preferences to the right or vice versa.
They’re saying that the 3 booths in Morphett could trigger a court directed redo if there is a lower than usual turnout and the result is very close.
I continue to wonder why we focus on the 2pp between Labor and the Libs/LNP. Increasingly this is a redundant statistic.
As someone who worked as a Declaration Officer in one of the booths, you are given instructions to ask the voter to number each and every box on the ballot in the House of Assemby.
Personally, if you don’t it should be classified as an informal ballot imo (you can number every box but leave the last one blank given it that can only be one nunber, the last number).
As history and all recent polls tell us, One Nation poll more strongly outside of metropolitan areas. That is also the case in 2026, but the real collapse in Liberal support has been in metropolitan Adelaide. The Liberal Party has been squeezed from both sides in Adelaide, losing votes to a dominant Labor Party led by Premier Peter Malinauskas, and to One Nation replacing them as the second placed party across a wide swathe of suburban Adelaide.
https://antonygreen.com.au/sa2026-some-early-observations-on-the-result/
Diogenes – what is comment about 3 booths in Morphett – delays in voting?
Having to wait in line longer doesn’t sound like a rerun argument. Anyone actually prevented from voting?
William – any reason why various booths don’t show up on your electoral results map. Eg 2 Munno Para booths and Willaston in Light.
And seem to be a couple missing in Morphett.
Spence – “Publicising the option would cause it to be more widespread which would be seriously counter-productive.”
So you’re saying that there is an option that if it was to become more known, would be a problem. By inference, since the option is less well known, then it’s acceptable. What does that say about the option then, if publicity is the only thing from keeping it being problematic.
Your Senate example is exactly what’s happening with this option. In the instance you just put a “1”, the voter’s preferences are being decided by the party via the ECSA process. But it’s hidden. And you can’t know the preference order.
Intentionally or not, a person putting “1” is explicitly not directing any further preferences. That is a not a decision anyone but the voter should make. The voter is not asking to be “saved”.
If the voter puts a “1” and expects it to be formal (when it clearly isn’t) that’s a conversation to have. That the electoral system sees the “1” and without informed consent, makes a construct to ensure formality is where things start getting super murky.
I completely understand about the reasoning of why the option exists but it’s a crutch. It’s not genuinely and honestly improving formality by changing the voter’s understanding or education and they’re just as likely to keep putting “1” if they know it counts it as a full sequence – precisely what you DON’T want the voter to keep doing. And then they may put a “1” at the federal election and not unreasonably think it will count.
The instruction clearly says number every box. If you are unable to do that, why should it unknowingly be done for you. The voter should always fully understand their vote and how it’s counted. This is not that.
“Saving” a ballot paper with a single “1” on it is and should be a big deal. At the end of the day, a vote is being constructed on behalf of the voter, that the voter has not explicitly consented to. That shouldn’t be ok.
Spence
The computers weren’t working at people were turned away at 8. They got back up after 1.5 to 2 hours. Obviously they could have come back hoping they were up or gone to another booth.
Seems a bit tenuous.
G
Agree.
And if you take the meta view, now that’s everyone has heard about it we are even more confused if we can do it next time. So it’s been counterproductive.
Very poor transparency.