Tuesday night
The Electoral Commission website is finally publishing two-candidate preferred results, but as ever there remains the South Australian peculiarity that the declaration votes are not being broken down into separate results for pre-polls, postals and absents, so we will have little guidance as to why what’s happening is happening as these results inevitably bounce around over the next week or so. After essentially no progress in the count on Monday, declaration votes started being reported in some seats yesterday.
The ABC rates nine seats as being in varying degrees of doubt, but I’m not inclined to agree with respect to Hammond, where declaration votes can only widen Liberal member Adrian Pederick’s 51.3-48.7 lead over independent Airlie Keen, who seems unlikely to make the final count in any case. That leaves clear results of 26 for Labor, 12 for Liberal and four for independents. Not among the in doubt is one seat I should have mentioned in the previous update: Gibson, where the identification of errors and the allocation of saved informal votes in accordance with registered party tickets on Saturday increased the size of Labor’s lead from 486 to an insurmountable 1055. That leaves:
Dunstan. Early indications are that this is going as I thought it might, with the first batch of declaration votes breaking 924-792 in favour of Steven Marshall, reducing the Labor lead from 143 to 11.
Finniss. Despite 1939 declaration votes breaking 1115-824 in favour of Liberal member David Basham over independent candidate Lou Nicholson on the two-party preferred candidate, it remains clear that he will not close the gap. So the issue remains whether Nicholson will indeed made the final count, or whether it will be a Liberal-Labor contest in which Basham will presumably prevail. The declaration votes so far suggest she won’t make it, as they have reduced her overall primary vote from 23.0% to 21.6% while increasing Labor’s from 23.4% to 23.7%.
Morialta. Liberal member John Gardner seems very unlikely to lose from here, the first batch of declaration votes having increased his margin from 145 to 347.
Unley. Another one that will shortly be off the Liberals’ endangered list if the first declaration votes are any guide: they have broken 680-402 in favour of Liberal member David Pisoni, increasing his lead from 92 to 370.
Waite. Liberal candidate Alexander Hyde needed declaration votes to break perhaps 64-36 in his favour to rein in Catherine Hutchesson’s lead on the two-candidate count – implausible as this seemed, he’s come close on the first batch, which have broken 609-376 his way (so 61.8%). Independent Heather Holmes-Ross nudging her way to the final count on preferences should continue to be rated very unlikely.
Sunday night
The news kept getting worse for the Liberals in today’s counting, thanks to two new two-candidate preference counts in seats where the wrong candidates were picked for the count on the night:
Waite. After conducting a preference count between Liberal candidate Alexander Hyde and independent Heather Holmes-Ross on the night, which made it clear Hyde would lose if Holmes-Ross made the final count, today a new count was conducted between Hyde and Labor candidate Catherine Hutchesson that made it clear he would lose to her too. That seems far the most likely outcome, with primary votes of Labor 27.4%, Liberal 24.5%, 18.9% for Liberal-turned-independent incumbent Sam Duluk and 15.3% for Holmes-Ross. Preferences from the Greens (12.0%) and Animal Justice (1.9%) could theoretically cause either independent to reduce the Liberals to third place and leave Labor and the independent at the final account, but that seems very unlikely. Labor thus looks poised to win the state’s second most affluent seat, which has it has neither won before now, either as Waite or in its previous incarnation as Mitcham going back to 1938.
Flinders. Liberal candidate Sam Telfer has 45.3% of the primary vote here, which in a field of six candidates that includes the Nationals would normally be enough. However, a two-candidate preferred count between Telfer and independent candidate Liz Habermann, which has thus far accounted for 10 out of 27 booths, finds preferences splitting 78-22 in favour of Habermann. According to the ABC, this suggests Habermann is ahead according to a method that matches the 10 booths with their equivalent results from 2018. However, projecting the preference flow so far across the primary votes puts Telfer ahead 51.1-48.9. I would also suggest that postal votes are likely to favour him. Should she fall short, the possibility of Habermann running in Grey at the federal election was canvassed on the ABC’s Insiders this morning.
Dunstan. Labor’s Cressida O’Hanlon trailed here 7191 to 7095 at the close on Saturday, but now leads 7376 to 7233. The ABC site explains: “Greens and Family First votes with insufficient preferences that were saved by SA’s unique ticket voting provision have been added today. Both parties lodged tickets flowing to Labor so that has added around 170 votes to Labor’s total.” That leaves him 0.5% behind, but my judgement yesterday that late counting was likely to improve his position by over 1% isn’t affected by this. It remains uncomfortably close for him, though presumably there is a strong chance of him retiring from politics and O’Hanlon getting a second crack at a by-election if she falls short.
Saturday night
Labor went into the election with 19 seats out of 47, had an easy gain in Florey with the departure of independent Frances Bedford, and have made it to a clear majority with five further gains from the Liberals. I count five potential further gains, including Steven Marshall’s seat of Dunstan, though I only reckon them to be ahead in one, and a sixth if they win Waite from a Liberal-turned-independent, which is very hard to call.
The Liberals won 25 seats in 2018, which had reduced to 22 by the election with three members moving to the cross-bench. Two of these three have been re-elected as independents while the third has been defeated – as just noted, it’s not clear whether by Liberal or Labor. If that seat remains with the Liberals and the other close races go their way, they will finish on 17. However, there is one further seat that may yet fall to an independent. Geoff Brock has proved net neutral for the Liberals in that the party gained his old seat of Frome, but have now lost Stuart to him. This leaves three or maybe four independents, or perhaps even five if it’s an independent who gets up in the complex race for Waite.
The display on the ABC site rates the most likely outcome as Labor on 28 seats, when they in fact lead in only 27. This would be the result of a probability-based determination that rates Labor as most likely to get over the line in one of the several seats where it is slightly behind, without any commitment as to which one.
The ABC’s system has booth-matching switched off, so the swings it shows are simply the pre-election margins as compared with the current raw totals. The analysis that follows, by contrast, compares election day booth results with their equivalent from last time, those being the only votes counted as of yet. All we will get today is rechecking and perhaps the reporting of a few straggler booths that didn’t get their two-candidate preferred results in from last night – counting of pre-polls, postals and absent votes, which by my reckoning should account for a bit less than 40% of the total, will begin on Monday. A further complication is that I have consistently used the post-redistribution margins calculated by the Boundaries Commission, which differ from those Antony Green has calculated for the ABC.
Labor gains:
Adelaide: The election day vote was completed at the end of the night, and showed the 0.8% Liberal margin easily accounted for by a 6.6% swing to Labor.
Davenport: The most impressive of Labor’s gains was its first ever win in Davenport, achieved by Erin Thompson with an 11.8% swing against Liberal member Steve Murray, who went into the election with a margin of 8.4%.
Elder: One of the four easy pickings for Labor with margins of less than 2% — precisely so in this case — swung to Labor by 7.5%, with Labor’s Nadia Clancy gaining the seat from Liberal member Carolyn Power.
King: The Liberals’ hope of toughing it out here on the back of Paula Leuthen’s sophomore surge weren’t realised — against a 0.8% margin, Labor’s Rhiannon Pearce scored a 3.9% swing.
Newland: In the tightest of the Liberal marginals, Labor’s Olivia Savvas did it easily with a swing of 5.0% (one booth is yet to report on the two-candidate preferred count, but this won’t matter much). In her bid to move from Florey, which she held for Labor from 1997 to 2017 and as an independent thereafter, Frances Bedford finished a very distant third with 11.9%.
Down to the wire:
Dunstan: Outgoing Premier Steven Marshall leads after counting of election day votes by 7191 to 7095, a margin of 0.3%. I calculate this as a swing of 6.2%, which given his margin of 8.1% suggests he’s likely to prevail. However, that’s the Boundaries Commission’s estimate of the margin — Antony Green only has it at 7.5%.
Gibson: The election day booths swung 10.7% to Labor, exceeding a Liberal margin of 9.9%, but not by so much that you’d call it.
Morialta: Outgoing Education Minister John Gardner had a 9.9% margin going in according to the Boundaries Commission, but only 9.4% according to Antony Green. On the election day vote he copped a swing of 8.6%.
Unley: This has been a pretty safe Liberal seat since 1993, and while David Pisoni looks like retaining it, he suffered a scare in the form of a 9.8% swing to Labor against a margin of 11.2%.
Waite: This one is very hard to read: the two-candidate preferred count has independent Heather Holmes-Ross leading Liberal candidate Alexander Hyde by 55.3% to 44.7%, but this will only apply if Holmes-Ross makes the final count and she’s actually running fourth. It’s theoretically possible that preferences from the Greens (12.0%) and Animal Justice (1.9%) could help her close the 18.9% to 15.3% gap against Liberal-turned-indepenent member Sam Duluk, and that Duluk’s preferences could then push her ahead of Hyde, although a lot of Duluk’s preferences will presumably go straight to Hyde. In that case, it comes down to a race between Hyde and Labor candidate Catherine Hutchesson that could go either way, with the result depending on the preferences of the nearly 50% of voters who voted for neither, about which we can only speculate.
Notable contests involving independents:
Stuart: I personally didn’t like Geoff Brock’s chances against Deputy Premier Dan van Holst Pellekaan, to which he moved after his home base of Port Pirie was transferred to the electorate from his existing seat of Frome. So it was a very substantial surprise that he romped home with 65.9% of the vote on the two-candidate preferred count at the end of the night, albeit that postal votes will undoubtedly rein that in a fair bit.
Kavel: Liberal-turned-independent Dan Cregan scored a thumping win with a majority on the primary vote.
Narungga: Another Liberal-turned-independent, Fraser Ellis, has comfortably retained his seat ahead of Liberal candidate Tom Michael with 58.9% on ECSA’s two-candidate preferred count, from primary votes of 32.4% for Ellis, 28.1% for Michael and 20.2% for Labor.
Finniss: ECSA conducted a count between Liberal member David Basham and independent candidate Lou Nicholson in which Nicholson polled 5590 of the election day votes (54.7%) and Basham polled 4625 (45.3%). However, this only applies if Nicholson makes the final preference count, which would seem to be touch and go — Basham is on 36.9%, Labor’s Amy Hueppauff is on 23.5% and Nicholson is on 22.9%, so Nicholson has a gap to close on preferences. Otherwise the final count will be Basham versus Hueppauff, in which case Basham should win fairly comfortably.
Florey: Worth noting as a Labor gain, but with independent Frances Bedford vacating the seat for an unsuccessful run in Newland, this was a mere formality.
Frome: Similarly, this predictably returned to the Liberals with Geoff Brock’s move to Stuart,
Finally, a bit over half of the count for the Legislative Council has been conducted, and the most likely result looks like being five seats for Labor, four for the Liberals and one each for the Greens and One Nation, the latter being in line for their first ever seat in the South Australian parliament. Taken together with the ongoing members elected in 2018, this will mean a chamber of nine Labor members, eight Liberals, two Greens, two from SA-Best and one from One Nation.
The Flinders figures on ABC are projections cf actual to date 2PP count on ECSA. But the gap suggests something odd happening. 2.7% advantage of Haberman on ECSA. 1.6% advantage Telfer on ABC.
I got caught out yesterday by ECSA’s slowness in updating the 2CP count in Flinders. Anthony Green is working off some kind of updated projection which leads to a different projected total from the ECSA count (which is incomplete). All this is before we see prepolls and Postals added. It does seem to have been a bit of a messy effort by ECSA but by next Sunday when all counting concludes, it won’t really matter!
Ven @ #198 Monday, March 21st, 2022 – 2:24 pm
Takes a while to get confirmation of the checking and additions as it has to go to Russia first via the jewish space laser and then returned via Bill Gates and the 5G vaccine human transmission line.
It’s all very quiet from counting land!
Someone on the previous page suggested the Waite independent should run for Boothby if she loses Waite, but that would put her on a collision-course with Jo Dyer, the high-profile independent already running there. The Libs would like nothing more than two decent independents splitting each other’s vote in a losable seat.
Outsider I think ABC projections include impact of postals etc? WB would be doing similar if the Pollbludger results whizbang was operating.
Rebecca @ #205 Monday, March 21st, 2022 – 2:48 pm
Ahhh. Yes. Thanks.
From Antony’s blog:
https://antonygreen.com.au/2022-south-australian-election-result/
2:45pm – sadly there will be very few updates today. ECSA cannot open any declaration votes until the envelopes have been checked against who voted on Saturday. At this stage ECSA are uploading the roll mark-off data from Saturday before the processing of declaration votes can begin. The number of possible multiple votes is invariably tiny, but South Australian electoral law makes this check compulsory before declaration votes can be counted. There may be updates for Dunstan, Morialta and possibly Finniss but not much else today.
Just have to be patient everybody. Don’t worry, they’ll all get counted.
At least we’re not waiting to see who will be able to form government.
Wat Tyler @ #209 Monday, March 21st, 2022 – 3:46 pm
My attention span doesnt allow for that.
Does anyone think the Liberals might prefer to lose Flinders at the moment instead of allowing Habermann to run in the federal election in Grey as a popular independent?
This would be a toss up.. a independent in a state seat can be re elected for a long time. The Federal seat would mean a serious contest in a previously safe seat. the state seats which make up Grey tend to be very loyal to their Mps once elected.I think the libs will retain Flinders.. so the question.is would she contest Grey
Two additional aggravations for discontented voters on Saturday – high petrol prices and long polling booths queues.
Wonder if they changed any votes?
New Premier has already announced Motor 500 race in Adelaide in December and shops open 2 hours earlier on Sundays.
ECSA’s polling day 2CP count in Flinders continues to grow – at a snail’s pace! However, Liz Habermann’s 2CP is resolutely sitting at around 52%, with 70% of the polling day votes added to the 2CP count. Still a long way to go, with prepolls and postals to come, but its definitely getting more interesting.
BREAKING Premier @PMalinauskasMP
meets with state’s #Covid19 authorities including Police Commissioner Grant Stevens & @SAHealth
officials including its boss and chief public health officer Nicola Spurrier
I am quite wary of assumptions about the likely behaviour of prepolls and postal votes at a time when the number of such votes has increased massively. This election will provide a great dataset for analysis and review of whether historical assumptions remain valid eg, postals favour the Libs, independents don’t do as well with postals and prepolls etc. We will have a better understanding by the weekend.
Odd – ABC has Telfer’s 2cp out to 51.8% now.
Grey is a hell of a lot bigger than Flinders – it also covers Giles, Stuart, Narungga and most of Frome. It’d be just about impossible for an independent campaign to cover (especially so soon after her state campaign).
Broadfoot got close in 2016 as part of Xenephon but you would say incumbency is important here and Ramsay is safe v an indie regardless of the state result in Flinders.
The Libs may feel they need to throw some campaign cash his way tho.
Some time ago, Anthony Green posted this explanation of what is going on today:
“Sadly there will be very few updates today. ECSA cannot open any declaration votes until the envelopes have been checked against who voted on Saturday. At this stage ECSA are uploading the roll mark-off data from Saturday before the processing of declaration votes can begin. The number of possible multiple votes is invariably tiny, but South Australian electoral law makes this check compulsory before declaration votes can be counted. There may be updates for Dunstan, Morialta and possibly Finniss but not much else today.”
SK: That was totally the Xenophon effect. Broadfoot went on to get 5% in 2019, without those coattails to ride on. Just like Skye Kakoschke-Moore in 2019 and SA Best this election, X candidates don’t do anywhere near as well without the man himself running.
(The one exception to that is Rebekha Sharkie, who might as well be an independent – she reminds me of Rosa Lee Long, the One Nation MP from north Queensland who won her seat on the primary vote for years after the rest of the party had withered.)
I know he has said he is not interested, but I have wondered what might happen if Mr X stood for election as an independent senator in a rogue last minute campaign. I expect he would get up easily!
If Mr X runs for the senate he wins a seat easily, his personal vote is massive
“ https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/john-barilaro-should-get-maximum-damages-after-hateful-videos-defamed-him-court-told-20220321-p5a6ia.html”
Some pretty gutless decision for Google to simply roll over on this. Another example of why defamation laws in this country need to be simply scrapped.
Michael Danby: Tel Aviv, (former) Labor.
Geez. Scrapping the bottom of the barrel. He’s right about 1 thing, however. It wouldn’t have happened under Shorten’s Leadership. … because she would t have been disloyal to Labor under Shorten.
You are spoiling a good thread, Andrew.
Agree @Birds of Paradox
Grey goes right down to the Gawler River so covers semi-urban areas like Two Wells and the new Estates at Roseworthy. Would be very hard for an Independent to develop a profile across such a large area, although Rebekha Sharkie has done ok attracting votes across the large Mayo Electorate which includes Kangaroo Island.
Danby spoke to Tingle today with the approval of Kimba’s husband and friends. What are their real priorities? Pretty ghoulish behaviour, isn’t it?
The so called terrible behaviour was excluding Kimba when she had proven herself to be what the leadership always suspected (at least since the time of the federal intervention into the Victorian branch): utterly disloyal and not to be trusted on the tactics committee.
Exactly what sort of ‘due process’ did she expect from her grizzle to Marles after that? I mean really. It was the tactics committee. And it now seems likely, that for all of her disloyalty and mendacious conduct, Marles and Albo were not prepared to pull the trigger – yet – and she was set to be preselected at the top of the Victorian ticket by the federal party at the time of her death.
Rod Harradine. Any relation to Brian?
Outsider @ #220 Monday, March 21st, 2022 – 5:45 pm
Have prepolls been counted?
“ You are spoiling a good thread, Andrew.”
Sorry. I’m discombobulated. Posting in the wring thread.
ajm @ #230 Monday, March 21st, 2022 – 7:29 pm
Just answered my own question with a bit of googling. Seems they couldn’t be counted until today at the earliest. Surely they could use the same mark-off system for prepolls and election day so they wouldn’t be allowing any double voting. I think every other jurisdiction in Australia does this.
Hmm, this from Flinders (latest update on ABC site):
Probably need to check preference distribution in Kavel too. Currently showing Dan Cregan getting 96% of preferences of other candidates.
Leigh Sales conducting a remarkably bitchy interview with Peter Malinauskas tonight.
Fun fact: If the Libs win every one of the in-doubt seats they are currently leading in, they will still have less seats than they did after the “2006 Rann-slide.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_South_Australian_state_election
“ Leigh Sales conducting a remarkably bitchy interview with Peter Malinauskas tonight.”
Nothing unremarkable about Sales being bitchy with Labor interviewees.
Another fun fact: the last five one-term governments in Australia have all been conservative governments:
QLD: Borbidge 1996-1998 (not even a full term, he came in partway through Goss’ third term.)
Vic: Baileau / Napthine 2010-2014
QLD: Newman 2012-2015
NT: Mills / Giles 2012-2016
SA: Marshall 2018-2022
Last one-term Labor government was under Tasmanian Premier Michael Field from 1989-1992.
Q;Last one-term Labor government was under Tasmanian Premier Michael Field from 1989-1992.
Wow, that’s an amazing statistic…..
Andrew Earlwood….. No relation to Brian Harradine, I’m a Social Democrat from the Dunstan era, rather than a Conservative/religious fundamentalist! 🙂
Asha: yeah, it ain’t pretty. 2006 was 28 ALP, 15 Lib, 4 Ind (already a record low for the Libs). Counting Mitchell and Fisher as seats which “should” be Labor and the rest Lib (by the 2pp winner), that’s 30-17.
2022: Giving Waite and Dunstan to Labor, Finniss to Nicholson and the rest to Lib: 28 ALP, 14 Lib, 5 Ind. Counting again by 2pp winner, that’s 28-19.
Labor’s winning 2pp in 2006 was 56.8; here it’s 55 or so, so that looks about right – a slightly less bad smacking than 2006. Meanwhile, the Libs’ problem with losing seats to independents just gets worse and worse…
1997: Chaffey, MacKillop, Mt Gambier.
2002: Chaffey, Fisher, Mt Gambier, Hammond.
2006: Chaffey, Fisher, Mt Gambier.
2010: Fisher, Frome, Mt Gambier.
2014: Fisher, Frome.
2018: Frome, Mt Gambier.
2022: Kavel, Mt Gambier, Narungga, Stuart, probably Finniss.
Add Hammond and Flinders to that list, and that’s 7 seats out of 19 that were either lost to independents or lucky escapes – almost half! That’s the true disaster for the Libs.
Malinauskas visited the RAH ICU today and met one of my friends who said he was very, very polished and impressive.
Another weird thing about Liberal seats in Adelaide, comparing 2006 with 2022. They’ve lost Davenport and Waite for the first time ever, but held on to Black (Bright/Mitchell in 2006), Colton, Hartley and Morialta. In particular, Colton loses its bellwether record. Electoral geography seems to have changed in Adelaide over the last 16 years.
BoP:
I’m imagine South Australia’s endless redistributions have played a part in that as well.
I really hope Mali cuts the close contact quarantine time from 14 days tomorrow, at least to ten days preferably seven. Otherwise it looks like he’s being pushed around by Nicola and her bizarro ideas about Covid which are pretty fringe now.
And change the definition of close contact. We are 15 minutes and the rest of the country are four hours.
Diogenes_says:
Monday, March 21, 2022 at 10:24 pm
“I really hope Mali cuts the close contact quarantine time from 14 days tomorrow, at least to ten days preferably seven. Otherwise it looks like he’s being pushed around by Nicola and her bizarro ideas about Covid which are pretty fringe now.
And change the definition of close contact. We are 15 minutes and the rest of the country are four hours.”
I hope Malinauskus follows the health advice. If Spurrier can justify why it is different to the eastern states then fine by me. IMHO I doubt that they have been following health advice.
Opening up when he did, and not closing again when advised by Spurrier( as Omicron reared it’s head) lost Marshall a lot of cred.
Asha: partly, but some of the differences are pretty big. Colton has gone from 16.1% ALP in 2006 to 3.1% Lib in 2022, for example – it sat way up the pendulum, in between Giles and Little Para (now Elizabeth). Elder was 15.4% ALP in 2006, and they’ve just won it back on 6.3%.
Meanwhile, there’s equally big differences in the other direction, notably in Light and Mawson (Labor’s two most marginal seats after 2006). Also, Davenport was 6.5% Lib in 2006, now 4.1% ALP; Waite goes from 4.3% Lib to 5.5% ALP.
(*) It could be an unintended long-term side effect of constant fiddling with boundaries to remove the Labor skew caused by strong Labor MPs in seats like Mawson, cutting Lib margins elsewhere.
(*) There’s distractions like Sam Duluk running against his old party.
(*) Matt Cowdrey won Colton off Labor in 2018, so he got a bit of a sophomore effect. (King also had a fairly small swing, although enough for Labor to win it.)
(*) 2022 was a win from opposition, while 2006 was a first-term govt being re-elected – sophomore swings for everyone.
Yeah, there’s a few things going on. (All those dot points were originally one hideously disjointed paragraph.)
Diogenes at 10.24pm
I don’t know if you’re SA-based.
I live in NSW. You do not want what we have (10k+ new cases per day, for another ‘wave’). I think SA’s current regulations (as you described) sound like what the whole country should be doing.
Diog 4 hours is ridiculous with a variant that can infect you in minutes. Follow the science.
NSW Transport Minister David Elliott reveals the real reason the SA Libs lost on Saturday:
https://www.skynews.com.au/australia-news/politics/nsw-transport-minister-david-elliott-blasts-liberal-partys-woke-issues-following-south-australias-state-election-defeat/news-story/4846a393756a765d758fd9c1532cdf5c?amp