Category: South Australian Politics

With four days to go until polling day, Fox & Hedgehog has the first South Australian state poll in nearly three weeks, and it suggests the campaign period has if anything widened One Nation’s lead over the Liberals, while doing little to dent Labor’s ascendancy. Labor is on 38% of the primary vote, down two on the last Fox & Hedgehog poll in early February, with One Nation up one to 21%, the Liberals down one to 18% and the Greens down one to 11%. Two-party preferred measures have Labor’s leads narrowing from 63-37 to 59-41 against One Nation and from 61-39 to 60-40 against the Liberals, with the Liberal lead over One Nation unchanged at 53-47. A three-party preferred measure has Labor down two to 52%, One Nation up one to 26% and Liberal up one to 22%. The poll was conducted March 6 to 16 from a sample of 1008.

The breakdowns include regional classifications of inner Adelaide, outer Adelaide and regional South Australia. With due regard to the small sample sizes, their results can be summarised as follows:

• The primary votes in inner Adelaide are Labor 45%, unchanged on 2022, while the Liberal vote is halved to 19%, with the Greens little changed on 13% and One Nation eclipsing them even here with 15%. This pans out to a Labor two-party lead over the Liberals of 65-35, for a swing of about 7.5%. That would be comfortably enough for Labor to win Unley (2.2%), Hartley (3.6%), Morphett (4.5%) and Colton (4.8%), but not quite Bragg (8.2%).

• The results for outer Adelaide are Labor 44%, up two to three points from 2022, Liberal 12%, down nearly 20, Greens 11%, up about two, and One Nation 20%, with Labor given a 66-34 lead over the Liberals, a swing of nearly 6%. The only seat the Liberals hold here is Morialta, where the margin is 1.4%. Presumably the strength of the Labor primary vote would fortify them against any threat from One Nation.

• One Nation leads the field in regional South Australia with 28% of the primary vote, with Labor on 22%, down about five on 2022, Liberal on 25%, down about 12, and the Greens on 8%, with others at 17%, much of it presumably going to independent incumbents. This would be unevenly distributed, but it surely suggests One Nation is unlikely to emerge empty-handed. Its strongest prospects are presumably Flinders, MacKillop, Chaffey, Narungga and Mount Gambier, which would raise the prospect of official opposition status. The Liberals are nonetheless credited with regional two-party leads of 51-49 over One Nation and 53-47 over Labor, the latter pointing to an adverse swing of 9% that presumably doesn’t bode well for them in Kavel.

Leadership ratings put Peter Malinauskas’s approval at an unchanged 52%, with his neutral rating up four to 26% and negative down two to 19%. Ashton Hurn is respectively up five to 25%, down one to 36% and up two to 15%, with 24% now never having heard of her, down six. Malinauskas’s lead as preferred premier is barely changed, out from 54-22 to 55-22. One fly in the One Nation ointment is that lead upper house candidate Cory Bernardi’s net rating is down from minus four to minus nine: down one on approval to 14%, up two on neutral to 37% and up four on disapproval to 23%.

Notwithstanding a headline in today’s Advertiser reading “candidate runs food truck without council approvals”, the biggest development of the South Australian campaign has probably been a scandal surrounding Health Minister Chris Picton (brother of Tim Picton, the former Labor WA state secretary who died in January after an assault outside a Perth nightclub), whose staff botched a bad job in seeking to discredit patients and their relatives who have complained about ambulance ramping. Yesterday brought the news that former AFL player Chris McDermott, star candidate and upper house ticket leader for the Sarah Game Fair Go for Australians party, had quit the party due to “irreconcilable differences” with Game, but the party’s prospects were likely remote in any case.

The remainder of this post will focus on how-to-vote cards, which can be found neatly displayed on the Electoral Commission website. These are of greater account than in other contexts due to the state’s distinctive practice of displaying them in polling booths, giving those of smaller parties a coverage they normally lack in the absence of the large volunteer base needed to disseminate them.

In considering the preferences of major parties, it is important to remember that their preferences are only distributed where they fail to run first or second, which is applying to an ever-increasing number of seats. However, in the case of Labor at the current election, it’s likely to happen only in country seats and perhaps a few places on the urban periphery where the final count could come down to Liberal and an independent. Labor’s cards notably have the Liberals ahead of a number of competitive or incumbent independents: Nick McBride and Fraser Ellis are last in MacKillop and Narungga, and Airlie Keen is behind the Liberal (though not One Nation) in Hammond. The point is almost certainly academic in Florey, but it’s nonetheless interesting to note that the Liberal candidate has been put ahead of one-time Labor MP Frances Bedford.

The Liberals have in all cases put One Nation ahead of Labor without the requirement of a “deal”, since One Nation is not directing preferences in any lower house seat, and in the upper house recommends preferences only to the two “family” parties. One Nation have also been placed ahead of competitive independents in Finniss (Lou Nicholson), Flinders (Meghan Petherick) and MacKillop (Nick McBride, who has been put last), though not Narungga (Fraser Ellis), Kavel (Matt Schultz), Mount Gambier (Travis Fatchen) and Port Adelaide (Claire Boan). As is usual for the Liberals these days, the Greens have mostly been put last and Labor second last.

The Greens have Labor ahead of Frances Bedford in Florey, despite what seems to me to be her progressive record as a former MP, along with the other independents previously noted in Narungga, MacKillop, Kavel and Hammond. However, the independents have been placed higher in Finniss, where Labor could conceivably make the final count, and Flinders, where it seems unlikely. The party has for some reason opted not to offer a recommendation in the seat of Adelaide.

Family First, the Australian Family Party and Fair Go for Australians all have conventionally right-wing tickets, with the first favouring One Nation over Liberal and the others largely vice-versa. The latter has been consistently favourable to independents, the others variable. The Nationals, who are running in three seats, have Meghan Petherick in Flinders ahead of both the Liberals and One Nation, and Liberal only fifth on an upper house order that favours small conservative parties. United Voice Australia has a consistently right-wing ordering of One Nation, Liberal, Labor, Greens, but has favoured independents over all of the above in all relevant cases, namely Florey, Port Adelaide and Narungga.

Animal Justice consistently has a conventionally left-wing ordering of Greens, Labor, Liberal, One Nation, but has favoured independents over all of them in relevant cases where the party is running, namely Finniss, Kavel and Stuart. Legalise Cannabis and Stephen Pallaras Real Change are all over the shop: the former seems to favour right-wing preference ordering in country seats and left-wing in the city, and has Labor ahead of the Greens in the upper house; the latter is consistent only in having One Nation last.

The third poll of the South Australian state election campaign, conducted by DemosAU/Ace Strategies for InDaily, finds Labor on 43% (compared with 44% from Newspoll and 37% from YouGov), One Nation on 19% (24% from Newspoll, 22% from YouGov), the Liberals on 18% (14% from Newspoll, 20% from YouGov) and the Greens on 12% (12% from Newspoll, 13% from YouGov). Also featured through the link are fairly extensive breakdowns by gender, age, education and housing tenure.

Results from the poll were published earlier in the week on upper house voting intention, with Labor on 38%, One Nation on 21%, Liberal on 15%, the Greens on 11%, Family First on 4% and Animal Justice on 3%. With 11 seats up for election and a quota of 8.33%, this suggests a clean four seats for Labor, two for One Nation, one for Liberal and one for the Greens, with the remainder most likely going to a fifth Labor, a third One Nation and a second Liberal, although Family First might be competitive. Otherwise the total numbers in the chamber would be Labor ten, Liberal six, One Nation four and Greens two.

The poll was conducted January 31 to February 16 from a sample of 1070.

Days out from the start of the formal campaign period, two major polls have emerged for the March 21 South Australian election, both extraordinary even by the standards of recent Australian opinion polling. Newspoll in The Australian has the Liberals reduced to a level that would have them hard pressed to win any seats at all, with just 14% of the primary vote to Labor’s 44%, One Nation’s 24% and the Greens’ 12%. Peter Malinauskas records a remarkable 67% approval rating, with disapproval at 27%, while recently installed Liberal leader Ashton Hurn is at 39% and 35%, with Malinauskas leading 67-19 on preferred premier. Issue salience questions are dominated by cost-of-living, health, economic management and housing, with “addressing the algal bloom” barely registering. The poll was conducted last Wednesday to Tuesday from a sample of 1057.

A YouGov poll in The Advertiser is somewhat more modest, though it still has One Nation running second on 22% to Labor’s 37%, the Liberals’ 20% and the Greens’ 13%. Unlike Newspoll, YouGov has troubled to produce respondent-allocated two-party preferred results, finding Labor leading Liberal 59-41 and One Nation 60-40, compared with 54.6-45.4 versus Liberal at the 2022 election. Peter Malinauskas is at 64% approval and 28% disapproval, with Ashton Hurn at 40% and 33% and Malinauskas holding a 64-20 lead on preferred premier. Respondents were also asked if they considered Labor and Liberal “mainstream” or “a fringe party not capable of governing the state”, respectively producing splits of 84-16 for Labor and 56-44 for Liberal. The poll encompassed a longer fieldwork period than Newspoll – February 6 to 17, as compared with February 11 to 17 – and might perhaps have been less affected by the Liberals’ federal convulsions.

Further news from the South Australian front:

• Frances Bedford has announced she will seek a comeback in Florey, which she held from 1997 to 2022, as a Labor member until 2017 and an independent thereafter. Bedford ran in neighbouring Newland in 2022, which had absorbed Florey’s former focal point of Modbury, but managed only 12.3%.

• Tammy Franks, who has sat as an independent since quitting the Greens last May, has announced she will seek re-election in the Legislative Council as an independent. Franks was elected from the top of the Greens ticket in both 2010 and 2018 but did not nominate for the preselection held in 2024, later saying she had made way for parties motivated by “ambition and self-interest”. She will be running on a ticket with Faith Coleman, an ecologist who has been conducting “citizen science research” into the state’s algal bloom crisis. Coleman told a parliamentary inquiry in January that multiple government staff members had told her they were instructed not to investigate the cause of the algal bloom until after the election, a claim vehemently denied by the government.

• David Penberty of The Australian last week wrote that Liberal-turned-independent MP Fraser Ellis was “expected to hold” in Narungga, despite having been found guilty in 2024 on four charges of misusing parliamentary travel entitlements.

• Conversely, both major parties reportedly expect the Liberals to recover MacKillop, whose Liberal-turned-independent member Nick McBride is on home detention after being charged with domestic violence offences. The sensitivity of the seat presumably helps explain the Liberals siding with local farmers over the mining industry through a promised moratorium on rare earths mining.

A little less than six weeks out from the state election, The Advertiser today carries a South Australian state poll from Fox & Hedgehog that shows One Nation matching the Liberals on the primary vote while leaving Labor’s overwhelming dominance intact. The poll has Labor on 40% of the primary vote, down one on an earlier Fox & Hedgehog poll conducted immediately before Vincent Tarzia’s resignation as Liberal leader in early December, with the Liberals down two to 19%, One Nation up seven to 20% and the Greens steady on 12%. Labor’s two-party preferred lead over the Liberals is unchanged at 61-39.

Peter Malinauskas’s net approval rating is plus 31, down a point on December, while Liberal leader Ashton Hurn debuts at plus seven, compared with minus eight for Tarzia in the last poll (UPDATE: Malinauskas is up one on positive to 52%, down three on neutral to 22% and up two on negative to 21%, while Hurn is respectively at 20%, 37% and 13%). Malinauskas leads 54-22 on preferred premier, little different from the 54-18 lead he recorded over Tarzia. The poll also inquired about Carlos Quaremba, who at the time the poll was commissioned was lined up for the top position on One Nation’s upper house ticket, but has now been bumped to second to make way for Cory Bernardi. Quaremba recorded 6% approval and 9% disapproval, with 57% admitting to never having heard of him.

Personal ratings are also provided for several federal political figures, with Pauline Hanson scoring a remarkably strong 44% approval rating with disapproval at 34%. Anthony Albanese is at 35% approval and 44% disapproval, with Sussan Ley at 17% and 32%, Angus Taylor at 13% and 20%, Andrew Hastie at 15% and 17%, and Alex Antic at 7% and 14%. Entertainingly, the questionnaire included a fictitious name in John Morsett, presumably to serve as a benchmark for the worth of results such as those for Carlos Quaremba, and it duly produced very similar results, finding 5% thinking well of him and 9% poorly. The poll was conducted January 31 to February 8 from a sample of 904.

UPDATE: The full report has been published on the pollster’s website, with its now customary depth of detail. It finds Labor leading One Nation 63-37 on two-party preferred and Liberal leading One Nation 53-47, with a three-party preferred figure having it at Labor 54%, One Nation 25% and Liberal on 21%. Cory Bernardi records personal ratings of 15% positive, 29% neutral and 29% negative.

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.