Click here for full display of South Australian election results.
Thursday night
Casey Briggs at the ABC relates that a recount (presumably as distinct from a preference distribution) has ended with One Nation’s Chantelle Thomas 58 votes clear of Liberal candidate Tania Stock in Narungga, compared with 77 votes in the initial count. However, there’s no sign of this on the ECSA site or in the results feed, so my system isn’t rating this as called. MacKillop on the other hand moves to “ON GAIN” status with the publication of a preference distribution confirming a 403-vote winning margin for James Virgo over Liberal candidate Rebekah Rosser.
Wednesday night
Most seats have preference distributions now, today’s highlight being confirmation of the Liberal win in Heysen, where the Greens fell 99 votes short of demoting Labor to third place and maybe winning on their preferences, though presumably we’ll never know. As it stands, Liberal incumbent Josh Teague retained the seat at the final count by 347 votes over Labor. Labor’s win in Morphett was confirmed by a distribution that gave their candidate, Toby Priest, a 306 margin over Liberal incumbent Stephen Patterson. Labor ended up retaining Light by 787 votes, a margin of 1.6%, where my system was still giving One Nation the faintest slither of a chance because it had no way of knowing the count was in fact over.
That leaves two seats without preference distributions that my system is not yet calling for essentially the same reason, which look like being the third and fourth seats for One Nation. As noted yesterday, the Liberal candidate has conceded defeat in MacKillop, where One Nation leads the two-candidate count by 383 after one last loose end got tied up today, which is assuredly too much to be disturbed by the emergence of any anomalies in the preference distribution. Nothing today from Narungga, where One Nation has ended the count with a 77-vote lead that will win the seat unless the preference distribution turns up something like a 50-vote bundle having been put in the wrong pile.
Tuesday night
A Facebook post by One Nation candidate Chantelle Thomas says he has won the count in Narungga by 71 votes, though the media feed has no update on her 77-vote lead at the end of yesterday. There were minor changes from rechecking in Heysen, but no change in Morphett or MacKillop.
Peter Malinauskas’s seat of Croydon has become the second seat after Finniss to report a full preference distribution, and it had the Liberal candidate dropping out before both One Nation and the Greens, with Malinauskas winning over the Greens candidate at the final count by a 24.0% margin. The One Nation preference exclusion split 61.7-28.3 in favour of Labor over the Greens: a bit over 20% of these votes were Liberal first preferences that flowed to One Nation, which would have boosted the flow to Labor to the extent that these voters were following the Liberal how-to-vote card.
Monday night
One Nation gained breathing room in the final stages of the count for Narungga: a batch of polling day declaration votes broke 44-18 their way, early voting declaration votes broke 23-15, and they gained 17 votes on rechecking, increasing their lead from 26 to 77. The week-long blockage in the MacKillop count finally cleared today, shortly after Liberal candidate Rebekah Rosser conceded defeat based on scrutineers’ reports. The 5526 votes of various types that were added broke almost evenly, with the One Nation lead narrowing from 428 to 380. My system isn’t giving it away, but as in a few other cases, it no doubt would be if it did not have a conservative over-estimate of the number of outstanding votes.
What Kevin Bonham describes as a “pro-Liberal Twitter account” claims a sample of One Nation’s preference flow had 62% going to Liberal, 23% to the Greens and 15% to Labor. In the absence of any better information to go on, I have implemented these numbers in my system in place of my previous guess of 50%, 29% and 21%, which was based on federal election preference flows and no doubt failed to account sufficiently for the impact of the Liberal how-to-vote card. However, it hasn’t actually made much difference to my projection, as the balance between the Greens and Labor is little changed, and the main question is which of the two makes the final count against the Liberal. Around 5% of the vote is tied up five other candidates, and my preference estimates collectively give them a fairly even three-way split. So far as it allowing for the possibility that Labor might win, this clearly isn’t going to happen: the two-candidate count has the Liberals leading by 239 (narrowing from 288 after the addition of 491 votes of various types since Saturday), and my system is allowing for nearly 800 votes outstanding when the actual number will be either zero or very close to it.
Finniss became the first seat to report a full preference distribution, and it confirmed that independent Lou Nicholson won the seat from only the fourth highest primary vote share. The exclusion of lower order candidates, notably the Greens, was enough to push her ahead of both One Nation and Labor, both of whose preferences (though especially Labor’s) heavily favoured her, giving her a 5.2% winning margin at the last.
Sunday night
With the curious exception of MacKillop, which has been pretty much stalled for the past week, counting for the close seats in South Australia is at a stage advanced enough that serious doubt remains only about Narungga, which might provide a fourth seat for One Nation (assuming those uncounted votes in MacKillop don’t erase their 428-vote lead) or a sixth for the Liberals. There is also the theoretical chance that the Greens could sneak into the last count in Heysen and pull off a late upset at the Liberals’ expense, but those with better information than myself do not expect this. My system is not quite calling Light, though I have no doubt it would be if its read on how many votes are outstanding wasn’t erring on the high side, or Morphett, which the ABC is calling for Labor on the basis of what I assume is better information than my own.
The race in Narungga keeps getting closer, the latest stroke in the Liberals’ favour being a correction to the result of the Kadina early voting centre that cut 21 votes from One Nation’s two-candidate count, reducing their lead from 47 to 26. I am unclear if any further rechecking remains before the full preference count, or if some last batch of late-arriving postals remains to be added to the count. Polling day declaration votes were added yesterday (meaning Sunday) in Morphett, which increased Labor’s lead from 261 to 290 – this was the only vote type for which no votes had been reported, and it may be that that’s all there is. If anything remains at all, it likely amounts to less than the size of Labor’s current lead.
Aside from the resolution to the mystery of MacKillop, remaining points of interest are whether any anomalies show up in the full distribution of preferences, which I’m told will begin for some seats today, and the resolution of the result for the Legislative Council. I’ve been paying no attention at all to the latter, but looks very much like being Labor five, One Nation three, Liberal two and Greens one.
What is up with MacKillop? The vote count on the night was painfully slow too, surely not a coincidence
Antony Green: Informal voting for the SA lower house election is 4.2%, up from 3.2% in 2022. This will largely be due to the massive increase in candidates, a 62% increase from 240 in 2022 to 388 in 2026. Fields of 8 to 12 candidates increase numbering errors.
The ABC has called MacKillop for One Nation. Their total has risen to 3 seats now.
From previous SA thread
I think it is Westminster tradition where no other opposition party has 10% of total seats except one opposition party that has 10% of seats , the opposition party with 10% of seats is considered official opposition.
However, if multiple parties have over 10% of total seats, then the opposition party with the most seats is considered the official opposition.
If William thinks there’s a chance, however slim, I’m still holding out hope for the Greens in Heysen
This is interesting from Kevin Bonham’s site, check it out, re Heysen
“Saturday 28th: One pro-Liberal twitter account has claimed that the flow from One Nation has been sampled at 62-23-15 (Liberal-Greens-Labor) which if true would have made the Greens competitive to jump into second while the gap remained around 1.6 points. However the ABC is showing figures not yet updated on the ECSA site in which the gap jumps to 2.4 points.”
William still has the gap at 1.6 points
That’s because I’m transposing an error by ECSA, whose headline numbers don’t include Polling Day Absent Ordinary Votes and Early Voting Absent Ordinary Votes on the primary vote. If you add up the booth results reported on my page, they will (correctly) agree with the ABC.
William
I would just like to say thanks for your coverage of both the campaign and the counting, especially with the complexity of the three or four cornered preference contests.
As for the result, obviously I am delighted to see the SA Liberals smashed, and sorry but not surprised to see ON score seats.
As for my prediction, Bragg did not fall, but otherwise I was close:
Reality looks like Labor 34 Libs 5 ON 4 and Ind 4
I think I was the closest. I had Labor on 34 seats, the Liberals on 4 seats, One Nation on 3 seats, the Greens on 1 seat, and independents on 6 seats. I underestimated the preference flow to the Liberals in Heysen as well as overestimated Labor and independents in the regions. I also thought that the Liberals would hold onto 3 seats in Adelaide, but they only held on to 1 (Bragg).
Thanks Socrates. The Liberal candidate in MacKillop has conceded defeat, based on information from scrutineers rather than the glacial ECSA count. Though the latter has finally produced a new result in Electoral Visitor/Mobile Declaration Votes. As in Narungga, these went badly for One Nation, but there aren’t many of them and obviously the Liberals aren’t doing particularly well on postals and absents.
https://x.com/CaseyBriggs/status/2038383692238737539
Further increments of Polling Day Declaration Votes and Early Voting Declaration Votes have been added in Narungga, respectively breaking 44-18 and 23-15 to One Nation. Their lead is out from 26 to 61.
From former ALP pollie Mick Atkinson F/B page:
How did the micro parties do in the South Australian election ? I’ll start with the family parties. Bob Day’s Australian Family Party contested all seats for an average vote of 0.8%. (It’s mean vote is lower, clustered around 0.5.). Its average would have been lower but for some donkey-vote assisted results. That is to say, the candidate who draws number one position on the ballot paper can expect, according to a Parliamentary Library paper, a boost of between 0.5% and 1.5%. I lean to the former estimate (It’s a 1990s paper). The Australian Family Party candidates were mostly members of the Day & Attard families, did not live in the electorates they contested, did not visit them in the campaign and did no campaigning. One candidate is cognitively impaired and has a carer.
According to Bob Day, the cost of the $50,000 in deposits necessary for these candidates to nominate (47 in the House of Assembly & three in the Legislative Council) will be met by South Australian taxpayers under the new public-funding scheme. The Australian Family Party lost its deposit in every seat it contested but Bob’s not worried about that because it’s not his money. Bob Day also received advance funding from the State for campaigning costs, although I don’t know what form this campaigning took. I didn’t see any Australian Family Party campaigning and I was a campaign manager in the State District of Enfield and letterboxed 35 SA1s, so I saw the inside of letterboxes often.
The Australian Family Party is hostile to the Family First Party and treats it as an impostor. By contrast with Bob Day’s outfit, Family First does do some campaigning: tying up corflute posters, letterboxing flyers, standing on pre-polls and polling booths. It stood in 35 House of Assembly State Districts. It polled an average of 2.2% in the seats it contested, three times the vote of Australian Family Party.
The Australian Family Party is hostile to Family First and in two State elections, in the only contest in which either party stood a chance (the Legislative Council), Bob Day directed his party’s preferences away from Family First and preferred his votes to exhaust rather than benefit the other Christian Democratic Party in the Legislative Council contest. The Australian Family Party how-to-vote directed its preferences to Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party and then to Mark Aldridge’s United Voice, two of whose candidates waved the Russian flag on the steps of State Parliament in support of the invasion of Ukraine. In this election, Family First reciprocated this hostility by preferencing The Nationals, One Nation & then the Liberal Party.
My prediction was:
Labor 36
Greens 0
Others 4
One Nation 3
Libs 4
Likely result is:
Labor 34
Greens 0
Others 4
One Nation 4
Libs 5
Thanks William
If nothing else, the figures Kevin reported give an interesting glimpse of what’s happening with One Nation preferences
It will be fascinating to see if it’s accurate or not and applies more broadly
I’m assuming the One Nation HTV had the Greens last?
The Liberals have nothing to Bragg about getting a swing to them in Bragg.
Labor put zero effort and I would argue they let them run free in the seat to avoid completely embarrassing them. Labor focused mainly on Hartley and Morphett where there were incumbent MP’s to defeat that were on marginal seat status.
But Vicki Chapman was hugely popular in Bragg so I am shocked that the current member did better than her in 2022.
Arange, what seats did you have going Labor that did not? Was it Ngajuri (idk the spelling) and Hammond?
It’s a shame Labor did not eclipse the Liberal total of 1993, it’s a shame it was closer than that election. The Liberals did too well despite their atrocious unpopularity.
Is Hurn just a good campaigner?
Hard Being Green,
The One Nation HTVs didn’t specify preferences.
The secret ones to direct prefs for the few who only voted 1 for ON put Greens last, I think someone reported here.
The MacKillop blockage clears at last. 5526 votes of various types have been added today, most of them just now, and they have broken almost evenly, with One Nation’s lead reduced from 428 to 380. We still don’t have Telephone/Interstate/Overseas Declaration Votes, so obviously it isn’t quite over.
Wow that took a while. I wonder if they had the vote count on a USB stick and only just uploaded it to election central.
Thanks Eric, of course they did. I should have remembered that
Daniel Tsays:
Monday, March 30, 2026 at 2:51 pm
“Arange, what seats did you have going Labor that did not? Was it Ngajuri (idk the spelling) and Hammond?
It’s a shame Labor did not eclipse the Liberal total of 1993, it’s a shame it was closer than that election. The Liberals did too well despite their atrocious unpopularity.
Is Hurn just a good campaigner?”
Heysen and Bragg.
I thought both Ngadjuri and Hammond would go to ONP, and they did.
I don’t think Hurn is charismatic enough to flip key 13 false, but she is probably more appealing than any other possible Liberal leaders
Is there one more seat to be declared in the Legislative Council. At the moment it appears to be as follows.
Labor 4 quotas
Liberal 2
Greens 1
One Nation 3
Leaving one extra quota to be declared.
As an observation, in the past in the Legislative Council or the Senate when Labor appears to have the best chance of winning the remaining seat, after all the miscellaneous parties preferences are counted, the remaining seat in most instances finishes up with one of the minor parties getting up.
The Finniss preference distribution is up, though good luck trying to make sense of it. If you can eventually work it out, it confirms that Lou Nicholson has indeed won with the fourth highest share of first preferences (and with less than she got in 2022).
https://result.ecsa.sa.gov.au/
William. Any idea when the discrepancy between the total count for each seat and the total count on the top of the results page will be sorted – ECSA feed issue?
Subject to Fargo spreadsheeting errors, this is the remainder LC quotas as of just now for each group after the ‘automaticaly’ elected candidates are accounted for.
Pauline Hanson’s One Nation 0.92
Labor Party 0.43
Legalise Cannabis 0.29
Family First 0.26
The Greens 0.24
Animal Justice Party 0.16
Independents 0.15
Real Change SA 0.12
Liberal Party 0.11
SA-BEST 0.08
Better Community 0.07
Australian Family Party 0.06
The Nationals 0.06
Fair Go for Australians 0.03
United Voice Australia 0.02
Fargo
That .92 for One Nation would almost certainly give them a third seat. That leaves one to be decided.
I think all along its looked like Labor would pick up a 5th seat in the Legislative Council, and they are still pretty well placed. It’s quite a handy lead considering how scattered the others are.
Outsider
The problem for labor is that most of those minor parties preferences will not favour them and even the Libs could sneak through on the rails to use racing parlance.
Antony Green’s preference outline in Finnis: https://x.com/AntonyGreenElec/status/2038554377196314897/photo/1
Green preferences going 60 to the Independent and 30 to Labor, an indication of some tactical voting?
Labor are clearly leading for 5th upper house seat. Will get a better run of preferences than any of the others, especially from Greens surplus.
And on serious matters, as an ex-pat South Australian who has lived in Melbourne for the last 40 plus years, it is fantastically brilliant to read the reporting of the Sheffield Shield final in the Victorian press putting the blame for defeat on everyone and everything including Umpiring decisions and the stumps being in the wrong position
The Vic’s won the toss and invited SA to bat in bowler friendly conditions
Then inserted another bowler during the game (noting SA did not insert another batsman when Hunt was hit and unable to continue fielding in the Vic’s first innings and that he batted in SA’s second innings taking no further part once dismissed)
The old story remains about the winners can please themselves and the losers can ……………
Then they detail the players SA have who were born in other States – but no mention of David Hookes or Darren Lehmann both recruited by Victoria
The SA Coach is from Queensland – except Queensland recruited him from SA
And Liam Scott played his first Shield game for SA when – so at what age?
Well done SA
Richly deserved
And made more enjoyable by the whinging Vic’s
The bar chart / data visualisation that Antony Green has used at https://antonygreen.com.au/sa2026-finniss-will-a-candidate-win-from-fourth-place/ for the full distribution of preferences is very well done, particularly for the purpose that it sets out to serve.
It’s a clear, simple, informative understanding of exactly what’s taken place, easy for the voter to comprehend and just the sort of way electoral commissions should (in part) be presenting information.
That paired with a first preference bar chart would actually be enough as an overview for a seat*. Put a couple of tables with the supporting raw data just below and you’re done.
Can Antony, William, Ben (Raue) and anyone else interested get together and make a proposition to all EC’s that they should take over as the official group to be presenting all vote reporting information for everyone through a single portal? (slightly joking but also slightly not joking.)
*Or you do some tests as to the best chart options for the purpose – but you get the idea.
“it confirms that Lou Nicholson has indeed won with the fourth highest share of first preferences ”
3rd highest (just, by 16 votes!)
That’s based on incomplete figures arising from an ECSA error, as described up thread:
https://www.pollbludger.net/2026/03/30/south-australian-election-late-counting-week-two/#comment-4696895
Looks like we’re getting closer to being done and dusted although I’m still holding out hope for a miracle in Heysen
South Australia’s shambolic state election operation will be reviewed as authorities face widespread criticism over “unacceptable” problems.
The Electoral Commission of SA received almost $37m to mobilise more than 8000 staff to manage nearly 1.4m state election voters and ballot papers at 700 booths statewide.
But the independent commission, which is taxpayer funded, is under fire over “unacceptable” blunders that plagued counts and delayed final results.
Problems include confusion over “bewildering” artificial intelligence images – which authorities took weeks to issue a “non decision” over – candidates surnames appearing twice on ballots, illegal how to vote cards issued, booths not opening, computer security failings, staff inspecting completed papers and officials watching “refresh” online tutorial videos.
Leaked documents show vote counting has been delayed at least five days.
https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/state-election/sas-electoral-commission-faces-independent-review-over-shambolic-state-election-failures/news-story/119030ea64f6fbd5e3f0a37d762f2d0a
Historically One Nation preferences have tended to favour independents over Liberals or Nationals (more or less regardless of what sort of independent it is). I was wondering if this dynamic would change in an election where One Nation was polling in the 20s rather than single digits, but the Finniss results suggest it hasn’t.
I haven’t seen anything that rules out Greens winning Heysen, but maybe Antony Green and Casey Briggs have .
The Finniss results suggest to me a progressive independent would have had better luck than the Greens, in terms of attracting preferences at the very least. This is an ongoing problem for Greens – if the Greens brand is doing candidates more harm than good then what are they as a movement.
This is what I have for the final LC quota after ON
Left Minor parties (AJ, LC , Green) : 0.69
Labor: 0.43
Everyone else (- 1 quota for ON): 0.61
Do the AJ,LC,Green leak to Labor or stay in the block of 3.
Then what happens with everyone else.
@Catprog
The AJ, LC and Green are not preferencing as a single block
Eg Greens have ALP of LC
LC have ALP over Greens
AJ have greens then 2 smaller parties/independents that will be knocked out first and then no LC or ALP
As a result the ALP should win the last spot as it did in the last SA election
The reason why Labor is in the box seat for the last Legislative Council seat is because of the high rate of exhaustion of ballot papers – in SA, a valid vote only requires a “1” above the line, and that’s the option chosen by 62% of voters in 2022. (Around the equivalent of 1.5 quotas ended up as exhausted votes).
The result were that the last 2 people elected (one each from Labor and One Nation) achieved only 0.7 of a quota.
In 2026, the first 10 elected will each have a full quota (one Nation will pick up enough through the preferences to get up to 3 quotas) – so Labor’s lead over others in the race for the 11th seat is (proportionately) a lot bigger than it seems – simply because quite a substantial proportion of other votes remaining will exhaust before getting to the last 2 standing (Labor plus either Family First or Cannabis).
Antony Green’s 2022 election report spells all this out: https://www.antonygreen.com.au/docs/sa/SA2022_ElectionResults.pdf
Nothing from Narungga yet. I’m guessing that one will be the most annoying seeing that according to the ABC it’s the only one that’s not called for anyone yet.
Spot on Outsider.
Easy win for 5th Labor on current voting pattern and based on 2022.
But will be weeks before the computer tabulation is completed and button pressed.
This year ECSA has much better scanning equipment so maybe the wait won’t be so long.
I love how enthusiastic Kevin Bonham is for seeing the white whale of someone winning a seat from 4th place on primaries.
Thanks to Mr Green on his blog the difference between the way voting works for the House of Reps and for the Legislative Council was summarised succintly.
I`d like to know what Mr Bowe thinks about using the Hare Clark system in the Leg Council but using a different one for the House of Reps – if he has time.
If both houses used the Hare Clark method, roughly how would the House of Reps result differ? Thank you.
Under Hare-Clark. I’d argue the Libs would’ve won an even less seats. And more seats for One Nation. Labor still would have a majority and the Greens would have 1-2 seats.
The other states won’t introduce it because historically it’s harder to defend seats. And voters usually vote more for parties than candidates themselves. Just like the senate. Personal votes still exist as there is always a candidate that gets more votes but it’s no longer a single member district. It’s a bunch of people responsible for the same electors.
According to the figures it appears One Nation has done better in Grey federally than Barker. Why is this? Barker is more conservative historically.
Daniel T. Labor would not have a majority with Hare Clark in SA lower house.
The result would look something like the LC because they are both versions of proportional representation.
.
Spence, then how did the Liberals win 3 consecutive majorities in Tasmania from 2014-2021? They didn’t get 50% of the vote did they? Or if they did it was very barely.
The legislative council is like NSW, it’s one big electorate statewide. Compare it to Victoria where it’s regions. I have no doubt that Adelaide would have seen inflated Labor numbers and would have translated to allot of seats.
Daniel: Tas had 5-seat regions then, so the Libs needed 3 quotas in 3 regions (technically 50%, but something like 45% is fine) and they could get away with losing 2-3 in the other regions. 40% statewide would be enough for a majority, as long as it’s distributed the right way.
Fun fact: the big win during Covid almost ended up as a minority government for the Libs. Peter Gutwein absolutely cleaned up in Bass with 3 quotas just for himself, but they lost in Hobart and getting that 13th seat was a mission.