FED2025 – South Australia House Results

With a state election due in March 2026, the Liberal Party’s disastrous Federal result in South Australia is bad news for the party’s state prospects.

Since losing state government in March 2022 after just one term in office, the SA Liberal Party has gone on to lose two further state seats to the Labor government of Premier Peter Malinauskas. The by-elections in both seats had been caused by the departure of former Liberal leaders.

And now the party has suffered a 5.2% two-party preferred swing against it at the Federal election, retained just two of the state’s 10 seats, neither in Adelaide, and polled only 28.0% of the first preference vote.

With only ten House seats, South Australia was something of a flyover state in the Federal election campaign.

With dozens of key seats in the eastern states, and with Western Australia having played such a critical role in Labor’s 2022 victory, both federal leaders regularly crossed South Australian airspace on inter-coastal campaign flights. Only occasionally were those journeys interrupted by a stopover in South Australia.

Every time Prime Minister Anthony Albanese visited, his campaigning was accompanied by the immensely popular Premier Malinauskas. Apparently posters of the Premier were as prominent as those for the Prime Minister on election day.

There were only two South Australian seats in play, both in Adelaide. Boothby (ALP 3.3%) had fallen to Labor in 2022, Labor’s first victory in the seat since the 1940s. The 2022 result had also left Sturt (LIB 0.5%) hanging by a thread.

That thread snapped on May 3. The map below shows Labor now holding all seven Adelaide metropolitan seats. The peri-metropolitan seat of Mayo also remains out of Liberal hands, being retained by Centre Alliance MHR Rebekha Sharkie. The Liberal Party’s two remaining seats are the vast rural and outback seats of Barker and Grey.

The results weren’t even close. A 7.1% swing in Sturt defeated two-term Liberal MP James Stevens and elected Labor’s candidate Claire Clutterham. She led on first preferences 35.3% to 34.3% and attracted 70% of preferences from other candidates. The Greens’ Katie McCusker polled 15.7% and local Independent Verity Cooper 7.2%. One Nation, Trumpet of Patriots and Family First together polled 7.5%.

Labor’s Louise Miller-Frost won Boothby at the 2022 election. The seat had previously been held by Liberal Nicolle Flint who retired to deal with a medical problem. Her health restored, Flint returned to re-contest her former seat. There was no second coming with a 7.8% swing to Labor in Boothby, Labor left holding this once Liberal seat with a safe 11.1% margin. Labor received 76% of preferences from third parties, the Greens polling 17.1% and the combined vote for One Nation, Trumpet of Patriots and Family First 7.8%.

Rebekha Sharkie first won the previously safe Liberal seat of Mayo in 2016 with 34.9% of the first preference vote. Her vote has slipped at the three elections since and she polled only 29.9% of first preferences this year. But Liberal candidate Zane Basic polled only 23.6% and was passed by Labor on Greens preferences meaning that Sharkie’s margin of 14.9% is versus Labor in 2025, not the Liberal Party. On the alternative two party preferred count Labor’s result is a remarkable 55.0% versus the Liberal Party.

All this produces the worst Liberal Party representation in the state’s history as a share of seats. Winning just two seats is the same disastrous outcome as Labor on the defeat of the Keating government in 1996.

Labor has polled 59.0% of the two-party preferred vote in South Australia, the party’s best ever result. As well as leading on first preferences, Labor received 64.6% of preferences overall, flows boosted by increased support for the Greens.

All ten seats swung to Labor and all seven of Labor’s seats are now classed as safe with margins above 6%. The Liberal seat of Grey had its Liberal margin halved to just 4.6% following the retirement of Rowan Ramsey and the challenge of a local Independent.

First preference results and change in vote were –

• Labor Party 38.3% (+3.8)
• Liberal Party a disastrous 28.4% (-7.1)
• Greens 13.4% (+0.6)
• One Nation 6.0% (+2.0)
• Independents 3.4% (+0.7)
• Centre Alliance unchanged on 3.3%
• Trumpet of Patriots 3.2%, down 0.7 compared to the United Australia Party in 2022
• Family First polled 2.6% on its Federal return

As the chart below shows, Labor has opened a wide gap over the Liberal Party, as wide as some of the Liberal leads in Labor’s bad years between 1996 and 2004. And Labor’s lead is effectively much larger with continued strong support for the Greens, all translating into Labor’s two-party preferred position.

One Nation’s support was strongest in the outback seat of Grey (10.0%), the northern Adelaide seat of Spence (9.5%) and rural Barker (8.2%). Trumpet of Patriots polled 4.3% in Hindmarsh, 4.0% in Makin and 3.0% in Spence.