South Australian Politics – The Poll Bludger

South Australian election guide

Introducing the Poll Bludger’s comprehensive guide to South Australia’s March 21 state election.

With exactly four months to go until the big day, a post to call attention to the fact that my South Australian election guide has been live for the past week or so. As usual, it features pages on each lower house seat, including tables, charts, interactive maps and write-ups; a further page doing the same for the upper house; and an overview page reviewing the electoral terrain and the general form of state politics over the past four years. There are a fair few gaps remaining to be filled in terms of yet-to-be-selected party candidates, but the whole thing will be updated and revised on a semi-regular basis over the coming months. Come election night itself, this site will feature its acclaimed live reporting of results, which is progressively getting more reliable in its functioning and sophisticated in its methods.

Killing season part three: the turn of the SA Liberals

Vincent Tarzia becomes the fourth state or territory Liberal leader to step aside in the space of a month.

With a state election looming on March 21, South Australian Liberal leader Vincent Tarzia has stepped down, citing a wish to focus on his family and local community and denying he had been undermined, and denying knowledge of recently reported efforts to have him make way for Shadow Health Minister Ashton Hurn. The Advertiser reports a statement from Hurn says only that she “will be speaking with my colleagues ahead of a party room meeting”. The deputy leader, Josh Teague, “shrugged off questions of whether he would put his hand up”.

UPDATE (6/12): The Advertiser (which reported this morning that Ashton Hurn was almost certain to be elected leader unopposed after Josh Teague said he would not contest) reports a poll conducted by new-ish outfit Fox & Hedgehog from November 24 to December 5, thus of little use in gauging the temperature after Tarzia’s departure, had Labor leading 61-39 on two-party preferred, from primary votes of Labor 41%, Liberal 21%, Greens 12% and One Nation 13%. Peter Malinauskas was rated positively by 51%, neutrally or uncertainly by 25% and negatively by 19%, compared with 17%, 36% and 25% for Tarzia (the balance saying they had never heard of them), with Malinauskas leading 54-18 on preferred premier. Ashton Hurn recorded 10% positive, 29% neutral and 12% negative.

Pauline Hanson recorded the highest approval out of a number of federal politicians canvassed at 38%, though partly this reflected high name recognition, with 24% neutral and 36% negative. Anthony Albanese scored 33%, 24% and 41%, Sussan Ley 16%, 35% and 29%. Further results for Penny Wong, Don Farrell, Alex Antic, Angus Taylor and Andrew Hastie, together with detailed voting intention breakdowns, are featured in the full report.

DemosAU: 66-34 to Labor in South Australia

Another poll finding Labor heading for a win of historic proportions in South Australia, including yet more evidence for a rising One Nation tide.

A DemosAU/Ace Strategies poll for InDaily on South Australian state voting intention all but matches the last published poll from the state in crediting Labor with a 66-34 lead on two-party preferred, from primary votes of Labor 47%, Liberal 21% and Greens 13%. This compares with 2022 election results of 54.4-45.6 in favour of Labor on two-party preferred, and primary votes of Labor 40.0%, Liberal 35.7% and Greens 9.1%. The poll finds Peter Malinauskas leading Vincent Tarzia for preferred premier by 58-19. Malinauskas is rated positively by 49%, neutrally by 37% and negatively by 14%, while Vincent Tarzia scores 15% positive, 55% neutral and 30% negative. Ratings are also provided for Labor members Kyam Maher and Chris Picton, and Liberals Ashton Hurn and Ben Hood.

The full report also features a Legislative Council voting intention result that has something the main result lacks in the shape of a result for One Nation, who are on a striking 12%, shading the Greens on 11%, with Labor on 37% and Liberal on 17%. Barely registering are former One Nation member Sarah Game and former Liberal member Jing Lee, whose Fair Go for Australians and Better Community parties are respectively 1% and statistically insignificant. The poll was conducted October 6 to 15 from a sample of 1006.

Some further Labor preselection news to relate since the last post here on South Australia a month ago:

• The previous episode related the surprise retirement announcements of Deputy Premier Susan Close and Treasurer Stephen Mullighan, respectively creating Labor preselection vacancies in Port Adelaide and Lee. The party has wasted little time in anointing their successors: the new candidate for Lee is David Wilkins, Port Adelaide Enfield councillor and chief-of-staff to Health Minister Chris Picton, while Port Adelaide will be contested by Cheyne Rich, deputy chief-of-staff to Peter Malinauskas.

• Labor wasted even less time preselecting new candidates for Elizabeth and Torrens, whose respective members Lee Odenwalder and Dana Wortley both announced their retirements a fortnight ago. Elizabeth will be contested by Ella Shaw, a campaign organiser at Labor’s head office; Torrens by Meagan Spencer, chief-of-staff to Primary Industries Minister Clare Scriven.

South Australian election minus six months

An accumulation of three months of preselection news ahead of a South Australian state election now only half a year away.

It is now six months minus one day until a South Australian state election scheduled for March 21, and three months plus one day since the last published opinion poll. One should not to hold one’s breath awaiting for a change to the latter situation (although you never know), but there has naturally been a substantial accumulation of election-related news in the interim, which can be summarised as follows:

• This week’s surprise retirement announcements by Deputy Premier Susan Close and Treasurer Stephen Mullighan create plum Labor preselection vacancies in their respective seats of Port Adelaide and Lee, but I’m aware of no reporting as to who might fill them.

• The Liberal Party state council last week determined the order of the party’s Legislative Council ticket, which will be headed by the two incumbents seeking re-election as Liberals, Ben Hood and Heidi Girolamo. The ticket is dominated by factional conservatives: in addition to Hood and Girolamo, their numbers include Rowan Mumford at number three, a former state party president who ran unsuccessfully in Kavel in 2022; Thea Hennessey at number four, co-owner of a construction business and part-time policy adviser, who was favoured for second position by Antic; and Belinda Crawford-Marshall in the unpromising sixth position. The only moderate is KD Singh, an Adelaide financial planner who emigrated from India in 2008, who holds a fifth position that has not availed the party since 2002. Of the other two Liberals with expiring terms, Terry Stephens will retire and Jing Lee, who resigned from the party in January and will seek re-election with her newly founded Better Community party.

• The upper house preselection occurred against the backdrop of division within the conservative camp between Senator Alex Antic and federal Barker MP Tony Pasin on the one hand, and former federal Boothby MP Nicolle Flint on the other. David Penberthy of The Australian reported last month that the two sides were respectively identified by their opponents as the “prayer group” and the “coalition of the disaffected”. Antic sought unsuccessfully to have Girolamo reduced to an unwinnable spot behind Hennessy, Playford mayor Glenn Docherty (who withdrew his nomination) and Crawford-Marshall.

• The Liberals have confirmed that Frank Pangallo, an upper house member who began political life with the Nick Xenophon’s SA-Best, will be their candidate for the Adelaide seat of Waite. Pangallo said in June he was “weighing up” joining the Liberal Party, criticising Labor over the cost of living, ambulance ramping and the state’s algal bloom crisis. Pangallo hit a spot of trouble last week when it emerged that sources he provided to parliament in support of a niche theory linking algal blooms to water desalination plants had been generated by AI.

• Independent Mount Gambier MP Troy Bell resigned from parliament a fortnight ago after losing an appeal against his conviction on 20 counts of stealing from a not-for-profit he was running during his former career as a teacher. Speaker Leon Bignell announced that no by-election would be held to replace him, leaving the seat vacant through to an election fixed for March 21. The Liberal candidate for the seat is Lamorna Alexander, governance and compliance manager with a community services not-for-profit. Fred Smith of The SE Voice reported last month that Alexander was preselected ahead of fertility specialist Lucy Lines.

• The Liberal candidate for the South East seat of Mackillop is Rebekah Rosser, a public relations consultant and former ministerial adviser, who was preselected last month ahead of Matt Neumann, a Bordertown pastor, and Lachie Haynes, an agricultural sales representative and former electorate officer to federal Barker MP Tony Pasin.

• Liberal MP Matt Cowdrey announced in June that he would not seek re-election in his western Adelaide seat of Colton, citing a desire to “move on from partisan politics”. Cowdrey did well to hold his seat by a 4.8% margin in 2022 in the face of a 1.4% swing, which the redistribution has increased to 5.0%. The new Liberal candidate is Bec Sutton, a project manager at SA Health.

• The Advertiser reported in August that former Liberal leader David Speirs, who quit parliament last year amid drug charges for which he was convicted in April, is expected by both parties to run as an independent in his former seat of Black on a campaign built around the algal bloom crisis. The by-election held after Speirs’ departure was won for Labor by Alex Dighton with a 12.6% swing.

• Former One Nation MLC Sarah Game will seek re-election under her new Fair Go for Australians party, and has enlisted as a running mate Adelaide councillor Henry Davis, who quit the Liberal Party in April complaining of a “disjointed party at war with itself”. (UPDATE: Rohan in comments notes that “Sarah Game MLC is not up for re-election this time – so presumably her ‘running mate’ Henry Davis will lead her party’s ticket in 2026.”)

YouGov: 67-33 to Labor in South Australia

A rare South Australian state poll finds Labor on course for one of the biggest landslides in Australian electoral history.

The Advertiser today carries a poll of South Australian state voting intention from YouGov (no online report at the time of writing, but the site should have one by morning), crediting Peter Malinauskas’s Labor government with an extraordinary two-party lead of 67-33. This suggests a 12.5% swing which, if uniform, would reduce the Liberals to five seats out of 47. Labor is at 48% on the primary vote, up from 40.0% at the March 2022 election; Liberals are on 21%, down from 35.7%; the Greens are on 14%, up from 9.1%; and One Nation are on 7%, up from 2.6% from 19 seats contested. The poll was conducted May 15 to 28 from a sample of 903. UPDATE: The Advertiser’s report here.

UPDATE 2: Further results in the Sunday Mail show Malinauskas with 70% approval, 18% disapproval and a 72-14 lead over Liberal leader Vincent Tarzia as preferred premier, with Tarzia on 22% approval and 31% disapproval.

Further developments ahead of the state election scheduled for March 21 next year, most involving the cross-bench, the major parties having been diverted over recent months by the federal election:

• Labor last week announced candidates for five seats: James Agness, state government housing policy adviser, in the safe Gawler-based seat of Light, which is being vacated with incumbent Tony Piccolo’s bid to win the neighbouring seat of Ngadjuri from the Liberals; Aria Bulkus, solicitor and daughter of Hawke-Keating government minister Nick Bolkus, in Colton, which Matt Cowdrey holds for the Liberals on a post-redistribution margin of 5.0%; “senior lawyer” Alice Rolls in Unley, which has a Liberal margin of 2.6%, and will be vacated at the election with the retirement of David Pisoni; Marisa Bell, Onkaparinga councillor, intensive care nurse and recent federal candidate for Mayo, in Heysen (held for the Liberals by Josh Teague on a margin of 2.3%); and Toby Priest, St Thomas School teacher and Immanuel College boarding supervisor, in Morphett (held for the Liberals by Stephen Patterson on a margin of 4.6%).

• Greens co-leader Tammy Franks quit the party in mid-May and said she would serve out her term as an independent. Franks did not contest the party’s preselection last year, and now says she made way for parties motivated by “ambition and self-interest” – presumably referring to Adelaide Hills deputy mayor Melanie Selwood, who was chosen to head the party’s upper house ticket. Franks said at the time she would retire at the election, but now says she will consider running. A finding against Franks by the party’s misconduct committee was subsequently leaked to the media.

• A week later, One Nation’s sole member, Sarah Game, quit the party citing issues with “the way the One Nation brand is perceived” and saying she wished to advocate for all “regardless of their heritage or religious beliefs” (this week she applied to register the party name “Sarah Game Fair Go for Australians”). Pauline Hanson and her chief-of-staff, James Ashby, retorted that this came a week after Game’s mother, Jennifer Game, was denied her ambition to lead the party’s upper house ticket. The elder Game had been lined up to lead the ticket at the 2022 election, but instead opted for the first of two unsuccessful runs for the Senate, while her then little-known daughter won the state seat in her stead.

• Former Liberal MLC Jing Lee announced in May she would contest the election under the Jing Lee Better Community banner. Lee quit the party in January ahead of an anticipated preselection defeat, support for her reportedly having tanked after she unexpectedly failed to support changes to abortion laws.

DemosAU: 59-41 to Labor in South Australia

A rare South Australian state poll confirms the impression of recent by-elections, plus extensive news on preselections and electoral reform a year out from the next election.

As reported in The Advertiser on Thursday, DemosAU has a poll of state voting intention for South Australia crediting Labor with a lead of 59-41, compared with 55.6-44.4 at the 2022 election, from primary votes of Labor 43% (40.0% in 2022), Liberal 30% (35.6%) and Greens 10% (9.1%). Peter Malinauskas holds a 51-23 lead over Vincent Tarzia as preferred premier. Fifty-three per cent agree the state is headed in the right direction, compared with 33% for disagree. The poll was conducted February 18 to 23 from a sample of 1004, but evidently required substantial weighting, as the methodology statement reports an effective sample of 440 and a margin of error of 4.8%.

The poll presents a rare opportunity for a South Australian politics post, in which to unload information accumulated of late about a state election now little more than a year away.

Continue reading “DemosAU: 59-41 to Labor in South Australia”

Weekend miscellany: duelling pendulums, Tasmanian seat polling and more (open thread)

Summarising federal redistributions ahead of the looming election, polling pointing to a status quo result in Tasmania’s federal seats, and various other electoral news.

Antony Green has published a pendulum display of post-redistribution seat margins for the federal election along with some explanation of what this entails. He did so exactly as I was finalising my own parallel effort, which I present here in the shape of a mock-up of the entry page for the federal election guide I’m hoping to publish around mid-January (a Western Australian election guide will precede it by a couple of weeks).

The margins shown are simply those from the 2022 election where no redistribution has been conducted, but the redistributions for New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia and the Northern Territory require a process of distributing the votes from 2022 across the redrawn electorates. The Northern Territory redistribution is still in the public consultation phase, but I have taken a punt on the proposed boundaries (in this case simply a matter of drawing the line between Solomon and Lingiari) being adopted as they seem impossible to argue with, and it appears Antony Green has reached the same conclusion.

I believe the redistribution calculation methods used by Antony and me are identical with respect to how they handle ordinary votes, (i.e. those cast on election day or at pre-poll voting centres), but we have presumably adopted different methods to deal with the difficult question of “non-static” vote types, such as postals, which are published in aggregate for the whole electorate with no indication of geographic variation. I haven’t crunched the numbers too thoroughly, but the biggest anomaly I can see is that we have landed 0.5% apart in the substantially redrawn seat of Chisholm. We are in agreement that the margin in Deakin is a tiny 0.02%, but where he has it in favour of the Liberals, I make the seat to be notionally Labor.

Where we substantially differ is in seats where an independent is part of the equation. Calculations here are necessarily speculative, as independents will not have been on the ballot paper in newly added areas (where transfers have been conducted between teal seats, this can be dealt with by treating them as a collective). Antony has a method involving comparison of House and Senate vote shares which he says is “imperfect, but so are all alternatives”. The imperfection of my method, which gives independents no primary votes from newly added areas and allocates only the preference flows they might have expected from the other candidates, is that it’s very harsh on the independents, a fact most apparent with respect to Kooyong, where my 0.1% margin for Monique Ryan compares with Antony’s 2.2%.

Complete accountings of my redistribution calculations can be observed through the following links, for New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia and Northern Territory.

Polling and electoral developments of note:

• This week’s Roy Morgan poll had the Coalition leading 52-48, out from 51-49 a week before, from primary votes of Labor 28% (down two, their worst result of the term), Coalition 38% (down half), Greens 13% (up half) and One Nation 6.5% (steady). The previous election two-party measure was a dead heat, unchanged on last week.

• The Australian reported last Saturday that a EMRS poll covering all five seats in Tasmania pointed to a status quo result of two Labor, two Liberal and one independent. In Labor’s precarious seat of Lyons, a generic party-based question has Labor on 34%, Liberal on 31%, the Greens on 11% and Jacqui Lambie Network 4%, while a separate question specifying candidates had 40% for Labor’s Rebecca White, 31% for Liberal candidate Susie Bowers and 9% for the Greens. The Liberals were well ahead in Braddon, leading 44% to 27% on the primary vote with the Greens on 9% and JLN on 7%. In Franklin the results were Labor 36%, Liberal 35% and Greens 11%, suggesting Labor would survive a substantial swing.

• Liberal MP Paul Fletcher announced this week that he will not recontest his seat of Bradfield. Fletcher retained the seat by 4.2% in 2022 in the face of a challenge from teal independent Nicolette Boele, who will run again at the coming election. His announcement comes shortly after teal independent MP Kylea Tink said she would not contest the seat following the abolition of her existing seat of North Sydney, much of whose territory will be transferred to Bradfield. The Sydney Morning Herald reports on two contenders to succeed Fletcher as Liberal candidate: Gisele Kapterian, an international trade lawyer and former staffer to Julie Bishop who shares Fletcher’s moderate factional alignment, and Penny George, director of corporate affairs at AstraZeneca and wife of state upper house member Scott Farlow. Kapterian was endorsed last year as the candidate for North Sydney, but had the rug pulled from under her with the seat’s abolition.

• Liberal MP Ian Goodenough, who lost preselection in his northern Perth suburbs seat of Moore to former Stirling MP Vince Connelly, has surprised nobody by announcing he will seek re-election as an independent. Connelly was the member for Stirling, part of which is now the southern end of Moore, from 2019 until its abolition in 2022. Goodenough claims to have been told that “opportunities might arise that would be of benefit” if he didn’t run.

• The Australian’s Feeding the Chooks column reports former Senator Joanna Lindgren is “poised” to be preselected as the LNP’s candidate for the Ipswich region seat of Blair, held for Labor by Shayne Neumann on a margin of 5.2%. Lindgren served in the Senate for a year after filling a casual vacancy but failed to win re-election at the 2016 double dissolution. Trevor Evans, who lost Brisbane to the Greens in 2022, is expected to again be chosen as the party’s candidate for the seat at a preselection to be held today, though he faces an opponent in Fiona Ward, a past federal and state candidate and regular preselection aspirant. Two contenders are named for the party’s preselection for Lilley, held for Labor by Annika Wells on a 10.5% margin: Kimberley Washington, a former staffer to LNP-turned-independent Senator Gerard Rennick, and Dylan Conway, an army veteran and founder of a mental health charity.

• Sarah Elks of The Australian reports Clive Palmer has launched a High Court bid to overrule a section of the Electoral Act that disallowed him from re-registering his United Australia Party for the next election after his voluntary deregistration of it in September 2022. The report quotes electoral law expert Graeme Orr saying the section exists to prevent newly deregistered parties having their names poached and did not reckon seeking to de-register and re-register, the “obvious reason” for which was to avoid having to make financial disclosures.

• The Victorian state by-election for Prahran will be held on February 8, with the ballot paper draw to be held on January 17. Tony Lupton, who held the seat for Labor from 2002 to 2010, has announced he will run as an independent, calling his former party’s decision to forfeit the contest “cowardly”. The Liberals will choose their candidate in a preselection ballot today.

• South Australia’s state redistribution has been finalised. Ben Raue at The Tally Room has taken a much closer look than I have, and concludes that the already minimal changes from the proposal have become even more conservative in the final determination. One change is that the seat of Frome will become Ngadjuri, owing to concerns raised that the seat’s namesake had been involved in a retribution attack on an Aboriginal encampment.

• Poll Bludger regular Adrian Beaumont offers an overview of results for last month’s US presidential and congressional elections with a more optimistic take for Democrats than most commentators, especially their prospects at the November 2026 midterm elections.

Too much money business

A deep dive into campaign finance reform legislation, federally and in South Australia.

The federal government’s proposed changes to campaign finance laws, to take effect in 2026, passed through the House of Representatives on Wednesday with the support of the Coalition and the opposition of the cross-bench. It will shortly come before the Senate, where the Coalition plans to move amendments to increase proposed spending caps and disclosure thresholds. Katina Curtis of The West Australian reports Labor maintains suspicions that the Coalition “might string talks along but backflip at the last minute for pure politics”, and is duly “keeping its options open” for a late deal with the cross-bench. In the absence of such a deal, Curtis further notes that amendments to the regime will assuredly feature in post-election horse trading in the event of a hung parliament.

That the 227-page bill looks set to proceed swiftly to enactment without a parliamentary inquiry has drawn criticism from constitutional law expert Anne Twomey and former NSW Supreme Court judge Anthony Whealy, the former concluding that the High Court will likely “end up doing the job instead”. At issue is the doctrine of implied constitutional freedom of political communication, by which the court disallowed the Hawke-Keating government’s attempt to ban political advertising in the electronic media, and more recently caps on third party spending in New South Wales. Twomey perceives two potential difficulties: that the spending caps are “so high that it undoes their aim”, and would make it difficult to establish that the laws serve a legitimate purpose justifying limitations on political communication; and that the bill’s provisions, as noted below, tend to favour parties over independents and incumbents over challengers.

The main provisions of the bill are as follows:

• What Graeme Orr of the University of Queensland describes as “the headline the government wants us to focus on” is that federal electoral donations will be capped at $20,000 per donor per year, increasing to $40,000 in election years, with individual donors allowed to donate no more than $640,000 in total. However, this is calculated at the level of the state or territory branch, such that an enterprising donor could contribute $720,000 to a party over a three-year term, plus extra for by-election campaigns. Joo-Cheong Tham of the University of Melbourne law schools notes loopholes include exemptions for union affiliation fees to Labor (uncapped, unlike similar laws in New South Wales) – and, “most significantly”, a failure to apply to donations made by candidates to their parties, which would seemingly amount to ongoing carte blanche for Clive Palmer.

• Caps on spending set at $90 million for general party spending and $800,000 for individual electorate campaigns. As proof against a legal challenge, this would barely clip Clive Palmer’s wings: his party spent $83 million on its 2019 campaign onslaught, and $70 million in 2022. The latter is an issue for the teals, whose campaign spends in some cases exceeded $2 million, which explains the Coalition’s enthusiasm for the package. Katina Curtis of The West Australian notes that spending caps are fair enough to the extent that “limiting donations without limiting spending heavily advantages people who have their own wealth and don’t have to pass the hat around”. However, the two distinct caps mean that parties trying to see off independents will be able to match their local campaign spend, and trump it by targeting the electorate with further spending that doesn’t mention their candidate, or mentions them alongside Senate candidates. Caps can also encourage third-party spending, which has reached its apotheosis with the “super PACs” that dominate election campaigning in the United States.

• The threshold for public disclosure of donations, which the Howard government hiked from $1500 to an indexed $10,000, will be cut from $16,900 to $1000. The Libeals are continuing to grumble about this, arguing that small businesses will feel too intimidated to donate to them. The bill will also dispense with the notoriously lax requirement that disclosures be made only twice yearly, henceforth to be monthly, then weekly during the campaign period, then daily in the week before and after election day.

• The public funding that currently allocates $3.35 per vote to candidates who exceed 4% will have the rate increased to $5. There will further be administrative funding amounting to $30,000 per lower house member and $15,000 per Senator, advantaging incumbents over challengers.

Meanwhile, the South Australian government last week introduced legislation to ban nearly all political donations and fill the gap with public funding, a move that has attracted the interest of The Economist. It may also yet attract the interest of the High Court, with Peter Malinauskas conceding the “challenging” task of drafting the legislation around the objections that might arise.

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