Click here for full display of South Australian election results.
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.
Finnis: Lou Nicholson is the 1st person in Australian history to win a single member seat on preferences from 4th spot.
Congrats to Lou. She really worked her guts out to take the seat out of Liberal hands.
Holdensillybilly at 6.41pm…
This show’s up the utter ridiculousness of preferential voting.
It’s bad enough that the ‘horse coming 2nd wins the race’, but it is utterly sad that ‘the horse coming 4th wins’.
FPTP voting is required.
Essentially, she’ll win because she’s – ‘least hated’.
What a way to decide the winning candidate!!!!!
Letting someone only 27% of the electorate have as their first choice win is a lot more ridiculous than a consensus pick where the 30% of the electorate made up of Labor + Greens + Animal Justice + A centrist independent, actually have their voice heard instead of being discarded.
FPTP would also discard the opinions of the 22.6% of the electorate from One Nation. In the end, it’s the One Nation voters whose preferences tip the scale for either the Liberal or for Nicholson in the 2PP.
You want to congratulate the horse coming 4th at the Melbourne Cup, that’s your problem.
As soon as I get a vote on changing our bullshit voting system, i’ll be voting for FPTP.
Can’t wait for the celebrations about the horse coming fucking 4th at this years Melbourne Cup.
Complete bullshit.
You don’t vote for horses.
@Alabama at 7:57pm
Well, your funeral, when electorates get settled by 30% Labor, 25% One Nation, 20% Coalition and 10% Greens, where Labor wins via FPTP.
Kirsdarke,
Swap the Finniss result, with Labor at 27%, and Family First at 18%, and somehow FF overtakes Labor on the 2PP.
I think even you would be startled.
You’d certainly be startled if the horse coming 4th at the Melbourne Cup, was declared the winner.
FPTP for me. If i get a chance to vote for it, vote for it I will.
You can have your preferential voting whilst you’ve got it.
Eventually we’ll get rid of it, given the opportunity.
The first three horses have all lost on protest before. Probably.
@Alabama
Ah, but that’s when “Tactical Voting” kicks in with FPTP.
While there’s some degree of the Greens lot being like “I will vote 1 Greens no matter what”, there’s another group that would be like “While I normally vote Greens, I’d rather Labor win than One Nation/Coalition” so they put their X for the Labor candidate in that situation, the Labor candidate would probably win.
And vice-versa where Labor voters would rather the Greens candidate win over One Nation/Coalition.
It goes to show just how fractured the vote is these days when 38.4% of the vote gets you roughly 74% of the seats in the House of Assembly.
Exactly Kirsdarke,
So the candidate who’se hated the least wins.
She has about 1/6th of the primary.
Labor will claw ahead on postals, yet the Greens vote will help the ‘indie’ overtake Labor at 4CP stage.
Labor vote then distributes in favour of the Indie, which then knocks out the O.N. candidate.
You can see the primaries yourself. Add Libs plus O.N. and you’ve got almost 50%, yet a candidate who garners a sixth of the vote, may win.
Complete bullshit.
The seat should be awarded to the Libs on the basis they got the highest vote.
Regardless, I don’t care about extended analysis of Finniss.
If i’m given a vote to have FPTP, i will vote for it.
Not for turning on this issue. Never.
No doubt the ‘powers that be’, will deny us that opportunity.
Holdenhilbilly,
Thanks for pointing out that little piece of history. I would’ve missed it.
ALABAMA, would you have the same objection to something like run off voting in which the top two candidates on first preferences then have an election just between them?
Almost 50% being the criteria for victory when the other candidate has over 50% is truly the kind of democracy only a cooker supports.
Narungga is now into that late counting zone where it could go either way. It looks like Labor is pretty much over the line in Morphett and Lobs should hang on to Heysen. So it’s possible we will end up with 6 Lib and 3 ON if Libs can snatch Narungga at the death.
While our preferential system may have its quirks, FPTP is a stupid system, and people keep forgetting that Labor would have comfortably won the last federal election with FPTP.
ALABAMA says:
Friday, March 27, 2026 at 7:57 pm
You want to congratulate the horse coming 4th at the Melbourne Cup, that’s your problem.
As soon as I get a vote on changing our bullshit voting system, i’ll be voting for FPTP.
中华人民共和国
You’ll have to get elected to Parliament to change the system cobber. Hope you don’t rely on preferences to get there.
Andrew Wilkie won Denison (now Clark) from 3rd place with 21.3% of the primary.
“ALABAMA, would you have the same objection to something like run off voting in which the top two candidates on first preferences then have an election just between them?”
How about instead of deciding randomly that everyone has to pick from the top two (why top two? maybe I hate the top two, but the other 10 candidates are all good and are splitting the vote!), you have a series of instant run-offs, where the person who gets the lowest vote is eliminated, their voters get to decide which of the next candidates decide who they would prefer.
And we could do this for every run-off, eliminate the least favoured candidate, then their voters can pick a new one.
And then we do this until we’re left with the final three, then the lowest candidate is eliminated everyone then gets to pick between whichever candidates are the final two.
People might be too dumb to understand that idea though. It’ll never work out.
I like the idea, Ghost of Whitlam, but it does sound awfully time consuming and administratively complex.
Perhaps a system could be devised whereby each run-off occurred much quicker, perhaps even instantly, with voters expressing a preference in advance for the order in which they would behave over multiple run-offs.
Are they counting over the weekend?
HH
Louis winning from 3rd position as per WB election results.
Anti
That little piece of history is incorrect.
Good to see the FPTP debate rear its ugly head again.
Yes, preferential voting means the electorate chooses the least worst candidate.
I can’t think of a better metaphor for Australian culture.
Meanwhile, I’ve been thinking about the savings provisions. In a hypothetical optional preferential scenario, what if you were to strike out the candidates you find unacceptable (and thereby specify that you want your vote to exhaust)?
Well that is curious, the SAEC and Pollbludger (live results) show for primaries, Nicholson 4,325, leading Redington (ALP) 4,254, but the ABC shows Redington (4,580) leading Nicholson 4,526. I am not sure who came third/fourth on primaries.
Ven says:
Saturday, March 28, 2026 at 9:10 am
Holdenhillbillysays:
Friday, March 27, 2026 at 6:41 pm
Finnis: Lou Nicholson is the 1st person in Australian history to win a single member seat on preferences from 4th spot.
HH
Louis winning from 3rd position as per WB election results
– – – –
Yes Nicholson has moved ahead of ALP into 3rd spot according to the Electoral Commission.
The ABC has Labor third in Finniss, with more votes counted than are showing on the ECSA website. Not that it matters, cosmically speaking, but for election junkies a tiny bit of history-making is always good.
Fargo,
If you go down the page on the ECSA site to the polling place result list, the totals are correct. They are also the same numbers as published on the ABC website. But the electorate total at the top of the ECSA page has the totals by candidate for the electorate wrong. It is not the total of the polling places. These are the totals William is using for his site.
The ABC’s computer is currently flagging errors for every candidate in every electorate because the ECSA data file is internally inconsistent. The totals by candidate for the electorate, as mentioned above, do not match the totals derived if you add up the polling places. The ABC system was designed to spot this inconsistency and ignore the provided totals and instead use the polling place totals.
The totals on the ABC site, and the totals by polling place on the ECSA site are correct. This problem is occurring because the single Declaration Total previously used has been replaced by seven different categories of votes. There has been a programming muck up in reconciling first count versus check count by category in producing intermediary category totals from which the single electorate totals is calculated.
This was found in testing before the election and we were assured that resolving first count versus check count was working correctly for each individual count centre be they a polling place or declaration vote type. It is the error in the intermediary totals that is causing ECSA’s electorate total to be wrong. The correct totals are down the page in the polling place tables and what you find on the ABC site.
Found the specific problem. The ECSA site electorate totals are not including Polling Day Absents or Early Absents in the electorate totals. The totals are included and producing correct totals in the polling place table at the bottom of the page. Williams’ site is using the incorrect totals produced in the ECSA feed but the ABC is using the polling place and count centre totals.
33 Labor, 5 Liberal, 2 One Nation, and 4 independents as of right now according to the ABC.
If you factor in the seats that are still in doubt the total so far would be:
ALP: 34 seats
LIB: 5 seats
PHON: 4 seats
IND: 4 seats
Thankyou Antony Green for that detailed explanation.
Alabama, your analogy of elections to the Melbourne Cup is absurd and doesn’t compare apples to apples. For a start, in the sport of kings, the hangers on (i.e. the owners, trainer and jockey) get less than 50% of the total purse, and the horse that wins the Melbourne Cup gets SFA. Secondly, the silverware itself, the horse itself again gets SFA, the cup goes to the owner; the trainer and the jockey get miniature replicas, and the long-suffering strapper gets the Tommy Woodcock Trophy. The main game, of course, is the purse, i.e. the cash, the moolah, the filthy lucre, and guess what, the winner only gets 45% and the also-rans get the rest. I could unpick your unsustainable arguments, re FPTP, apart in great detail, but clearly you haven’t done enough basic homework to get yourself to “first base” for a mature discussion on the issue. Your assumption that all voters “hate” those they don’t agree with, and that “the least hated candidate” wins, would be a good place to start. In the meantime, I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed man.
So the ALP have gone from 27 seats at the last election. The 2 bye elections wins. And then 5 more at this election. Total 34.
It’s been nearly a day since they counted anything in MacKillop.
There’s also a handful of booths with no votes counted.
Elder: Clapham and Hawthorn.
Gibson: Glenelg South.
Giles: Whyalla Norrie N and NW, Willsden.
Stuart: Port Augusta EVC.
The three in Giles are marked as closed on the ECSA website (this was publicised ahead of time), so ignore them. The others – where are they? The ones in Elder and Gibson aren’t changing anything, but the EVC in Port Augusta is big enough to matter. There were 5000 votes for Giles there, so it certainly wasn’t closed.
Dingbat
“Are they counting over the weekend?”
They’re lucky to be counting during the week, let alone on weekends.
Tom is replying to a 7 News tweet.
https://x.com/7NewsAdelaide/status/2037758081577398779
7NEWS Adelaide @7NewsAdelaide
The SA Liberals have headed to the Adelaide Hills to thank voters after deputy leader Josh Teague officially retained the seat of Heysen by just a few hundred votes. A week after the election, the bruised party says it has secured its place as the state’s official opposition.
Image
4:06 PM · Mar 28, 2026
https://x.com/TKoutsantonisMP/status/2037809306423451858
Tom Koutsantonis MP @TKoutsantonisMP
Not sure where this concept of “official opposition” has originated. There is no statutory number in the SA Parliament for “official opposition” status. The remaining much larger cohort of cross bench MP in the House is much larger than the Lib MP group. Also One Nation received more votes.
7:29 PM · Mar 28, 2026
Still though, rather impressive that the Liberals seem to have held on to Heysen.
I thought that would be gone to either Labor or the Greens for sure. But next time it’ll most likely be a target for a Teal Independent, especially if Josh Teague ends up as Liberal Leader in the time of the next election in 2030 after all the shenanigans due to come with One Nation in the next 4 years.
Tom is probably just stirring the pot, or just forgot this. Maybe its not codified in SA law, but its a well known Westminster system convention, enough for it to be on the SA parliament site.
“The Opposition is the largest minority group or coalition of members in the House of Assembly who are not supporters of the Government. The party system in Australia usually makes this quite clear, as it is the second largest “political party” group in the House of Assembly. The head of this group is known as the Leader of the Opposition.”
https://www.parliament.sa.gov.au/en/About-Parliament/Opposition
Leroy
It’s up to the governor. The convention is a precedent.
If some indies and ON join force, it could be interesting but Turbo is just continuing his weird obsession with Hurn.
I think it’s a love-hate thing.
State politics is a lot less contentious than the zoo on the Fed thread. But then again, we didn’t come from convict stock. 😉
In many legislatures (including Canberra) the Leader of the Opposition has additional privileges and a salary bump in recognition of the importance of the constitutional role.
In the UK only the LOTO can move a no confidence motion and gets to ask 6 questions at PMQs they also get a separate allowance to pay for staff to support the role (this is in addition to the ‘Short Money’ allocations)
In Congress the minority leaders have additional speaking rights, in the House they get what’s called a ‘magic minute’ which means they can speak for as long as they like.
The problem is when the opposition is so small that they are simply unable to oppose the Government properly over all policy areas. And the chances of the Libs, ON and the rest coalescing into an organised group is less than zero.
Even in Westminister with a current 116 MPs it’s hard for the Tories to do that. They currently have 116 seats but 2 are deputy speakers so can’t act as shadow ministers, another 8 chair Select and other Committees. A chunk of the rest are either incapable of being a shadow or simply don’t want to be one.
In any legislature there is only so much work special advisors or party staffers can do to plug the scrutiny gap. They can draft questions and amendments but you still need a member to submit them and speak to them in the chamber & committee.
Assuming Labor wins Morphett, that’d mean the Liberals hold only one seat in Adelaide – Bragg.
Thank you William Bowe, as always, for your regular updates through the late counting process.
Re the Leader of the Opposition issue – it’s a convention, which is clearly explained on the SA Parliament website. Its not a matter for the Governor – rather the convention is a Parliamentary one and presumably, therefore, the Speaker is the final arbiter. A similar issue arose previously after the 2016 NT election when the CLP was reduced to 2 members and 5 independents were elected. Advice from the Solicitor General at the time was that only the CLP had any prospect of forming an alternative Government and that the independents (being independent!) could not do so.
See here: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-30/independents-wil-not-be-recognised-at-opposition-in-nt/7799786
I suppose if 2 or 3 independents explicitly declared support for a One Nation opposition over the Libs, the Speaker would need to make a decision, as that situation would not be analogous to a NT-type situation. For the time being, it seems clear enough the Libs will be the opposition, especially given that I cannot imagine any of the independents preferring a ON-led opposition to a Liberal one.
Labor may have been keen for a ON opposition because of the greater political opportunities this would present to demonstrate the utter unfitness of ON to govern. ON can continue to be the voice of grievance without the burden of presenting itself as a legitimate alternative government, which it is incapable of doing.
Another quick observation. SA’s one week rule for receiving postal votes makes a lot of sense. Also, other changes made to the election rules (banning corflutes!!) are a big success.
As I understand the disclosure rules for donations, ON was effectively exempt at the 2026 election because it had no Parliamentary members (thank you Sarah Game!). This will not be the case next time. It looks like ON ran a very slick and well resourced campaign, with a highly visible and well targeted online presence, notwithstanding the lack of any party structure in SA. They managed to mobilise a good number of volunteers to man polling booths, but presumably the actual organisation of the campaign was run and funded from elsewhere, although ON candidates apparently pay some pretty hefty fees to the party as a contribution to expenses.
I reckon some further tweaking of SA’s election finance laws could be on the horizon. No doubt something else for the Commonwealth to consider as well.
At the end of Saturday, WB results state that only 74.8% are counted. WB even commented that Saturday was the last day to receive postals.
As I see it all the votes PVs that can be counted are counted. Maybe a few hundred are left, if any.
What I am trying to say is 74.8% is very low vote for compulsory voting. Unlike NT, the Aboriginal community in SA is not significant. So why such a low vote is bit baffling to me.
There are a good many votes still to be counted. MacKillop, to pick the example I’m focused on, has about 4000 votes unaccounted for.
@Ven I wouldn’t say “not significant”. It’s actually the largest community for a state in Australia percentage wise. Remember the Northern Territory is a territory, not a state.
The turnout is currently at 86.4%. ECSA’s state-wide totals are currently missing Absent votes due to a coding error and that’s propagating through to William’s site in the feed. The same problem afflicts all electorate totals. On each electorate page of ECSA’s site, the totals are correct if you look at the results by polling place section but wrong for the electorate totals. The ABC site has the correct numbers as it is adding up totals from the polling places.
ABC computer thinks Labor has won Morphett.