Nominations closed today for the South Australian election. A total of 240 candidates have nominated for the House of Assembly with the ballot draw for all seats taking place today.
The ballot draw for the Legislative Council will be at noon on Tuesday 1 March. Details of the Council nominations will not be released until after the ballot draw. There are 19 groups contesting the Legislative Council and one ungrouped candidate. More details tomorrow.
You can find all lower candidates up on my ABC election site.
The chart below shows the number of candidates that have nominated for the House of Assembly at South Australian Elections since 1989.
Details of candidates and groups for the for the Legislative Council wil not be relased
The candidates by party are as follows -
- Labor 47 candidates - contesting all seats
- Liberal 47 - contesting all seats
- Greens 43 - not contesting Frome, MacKillop, Mount Gambier and Narungga. It is the first time since 2002 that the Greens have not contested every seat.
- Family First 34 - while Family First is a new party registered using an old name, the party with that name previously contested 27 seats in 2002, 45 in 2006, 47 in 2010, 42 in 2014 and 33 as the Australian Conseravtives in 2018.
- Independents 20 - up from 15 in 2018.
- One Nation 19 - the party has only prevously contested two lower house SA elections with 47 candidates in 2002 and six in 2006.
- Animal Justice 10 - up from 4 candidates in 2018.
- National Party 8 - the most candidates in more than three decades according to my records with 4 in 2006 the highest number in recent years.
- Real Change SA 4 - new party
- Australian Family Party 6 - new party
- Liberal Democrats 1 - new party for SA elections
- SA Best 1 - down from 36 in 2018, contesting only the Whyalla based seat of Giles.
There are only three candidates nominated for Black, Colton, Hartley, Morphett, Unley and West Torrens. Nine candidates have nominated for Newlands, the government's most marginal seat.
The number of seats with a given number of candidates at elections since 1989 are as follows -
| Candidates | Candidates per District | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Election | Total | Average | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |
| 1989 | 180 | 3.8 | 21 | 15 | 9 | 2 | .. | .. | .. |
| 1993 | 227 | 4.8 | 7 | 17 | 11 | 5 | 3 | 4 | .. |
| 1997 | 197 | 4.2 | 17 | 16 | 6 | 4 | 4 | .. | .. |
| 2002 | 302 | 6.4 | .. | 1 | 12 | 11 | 15 | 5 | 3 |
| 2006 | 269 | 5.7 | .. | 1 | 20 | 19 | 5 | 2 | .. |
| 2010 | 253 | 5.4 | .. | 11 | 21 | 5 | 7 | 2 | 1 |
| 2014 | 204 | 4.3 | 1 | 31 | 13 | 2 | .. | .. | .. |
| 2018 | 264 | 5.6 | 2 | 5 | 16 | 14 | 7 | 2 | 1 |
| 2022 | 240 | 5.1 | 6 | 11 | 13 | 8 | 8 | .. | 1 |
Antony Green… you just excel with all the stats!!!
Interesting about the Greens – any idea as to the reason, Anthony? Are they cash-strapped? Obviously they don’t stand a chance in any rural SA seats (or anywhere else in this election, for that matter) but one would think this will damage their chances in the Legislative Council.
Glad to see the most bizarre political party I’ve ever seen on a ballot paper (Danig) got the message from 2018 and threw in the towel. One of their more hilarious (and terrifying) policies was to force anyone on unemployment benefits for more than 3 months to join the military.
COMMENT: I presume they just had difficulty finding a candidate. You need to find someone to do it who doesn’t end up having to take leave or resign from a job.