(UPDATE: I’ve started doing rolling updates of the overall figures that you can find in this post. For more details figures on each seat and regular updates my suggestion is use the ABC election site which will update results every time the Electoral Commission produces new data. I’m doing work on the site weeding out inconsistencies in the Electoral Commission’s data.)
The scale of the Liberal Party’s disastrous result at Saturday’s South Australian election is hard to comprehend for anyone with a background in Australian political history.
Australia has had a stable dominant two party system for eight decades since the formation of the Liberal Party in the 1940s. On one side of politics is the Labor Party, on the other the Liberal-National Coalition in Canberra, or the Liberal Party on its own in South Australia.
For one of Australia’s two major parties, the South Australian Liberal Party, to perform so badly is a political earthquake. The Liberal Party has been beaten into third place with just 19.0% of the first preference vote. (As of Monday afternoon with 65.0% of the first preference vote counted.)
The eight decade old Liberal Party has been outpolled by Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, a party that has only twice reached double figures at a state election, both of those occurring in its home state Queensland.
In this post I’m going to run through some of the more startling statistics of the election. Most are good news for One Nation and bad news for the Liberal Party. The numbers also include warnings for the Labor Party.
Major and Minor Party Vote Records
2026 was the 17th election since the old malapportioned electoral system was weakened in 1970. Of those 17, 15 recorded a combined Labor and Liberal Party first preference vote above 75%. The first time it fell below that level was 70.0% in 2018 when Nick Xenophon’s SA Best ate into both party’s support. The figure for 2026 is currently 56.7%, nearly 20 percentage points below its normal level.
Before last weekend, minor parties that have reached double figures include the Australian Democrats 10.3% in 1989 and 16.5% in 1997. Nick Xenophon’s SA Best polled 14.1% in 2018, and the breakaway Liberal Movement polled 18.3% in 1975 as the Liberal Party recorded its previous low primary vote of 31.5%.
With the count incomplete, in 2026 the Liberal Party has polled only 19.0%, down 16.7% on 2022, and One Nation has risen to 22.1%, up from 2.6% in 2022 or 6.6% in the 19 seats it contested.
Labor’s current total is 37.7%, down 2.3% on its level in 2022 and down 7.5% on the 45.2% recorded by Labor under Mike Rann in 2006. There were far fewer parties on the ballot paper in 2006.
Two-party preferred statistics are unreliable for 2026 given that only 12 of the 47 districts have finished as two-party preferred contests. My rough estimate of a state-wide two-party preferred figure is 57.8%, Labor’s highest on record, but short of the Liberal Party’s 61.0% in 1993.
Votes in seats
There are some remarkable statistics on seat results by party.
With counts incomplete, Of the 47 districts, only 12 sit as traditional Labor versus Liberal two-party preferred contests. There are 26 Labor-One Nation contests, five Liberal-One Nation races, One Labor-Independent and one Liberal-Independent race. That leaves Stuart and Mount Gambier as Independent versus One Nation contests, that is seats where both major parties have been excluded.
Labor leads on first preferences in 35 seats, the Liberal Party seven, One Nation three and Independents two.
Labor won seven seats on first preferences and has a primary vote between 40% and 50% in another 20. The Liberal Party has polled above 40% in two seats. Independent Geoff Brock is also over 40% in Stuart.
The Liberal Party polled between 30% and 40% in five seats and between 20% and 30% in 10. It has polled in single digits in 15 districts. One Nation has polled above 30% in eight districts and 20-30% in 19. The Greens passed 20% in Heysen and passed 15% in another six seats.
The Liberal Party finished first on primary votes in seven seats, second in 11, third in 13, fourth in 14 and fifth in two seats, Black and Port Adelaide.
The Liberal Party with a lower vote may win more seats than One Nation because One Nation’s support is more evenly distributed. With both parties having a low vote compared to the victorious Labor Party, concentration is favouring the Liberal Party when it comes to winning seats.
The Liberal Party is averaging 18.6% per seat with a standard deviation of 10.7%. One Nation is averaging 22.1% with a standard deviation of 7.8%. The Liberal Party have more seats on very low primaries, but its upper range extends further giving it a chance to win more seats than One Nation.
Regional Breakdown
The table below breaks down South Australia into two regions, Adelaide with 33 seats and the rest of the state with 14 seats.
As history and all recent polls tell us, One Nation poll more strongly outside of metropolitan areas. That is also the case in 2026, but the real collapse in Liberal support has been in metropolitan Adelaide. The Liberal Party has been squeezed from both sides in Adelaide, losing votes to a dominant Labor Party led by Premier Peter Malinauskas, and to One Nation replacing them as the second placed party across a wide swathe of suburban Adelaide.
The Warning for Labor
The chart below breaks down Labor seats by pre-election margin. Marginal seats are under 6%, safe seats 6-12% and safe seats beyond 12%.
The tables makes clear what has already been noted – One Nation has polled well in Adelaide’s outer suburbs. Outer Adealide is where most of Labor’s safest seats lie. As the above table shows clearly, Labor’s vote is down most in its own safe seats. This may not lose Labor seats, but it points to a possible re-alignment of party support, and where One Nation is tapping into voter sentiment.
Labor’s losses may be small at this election with a popular Labor government. But what about when Labor fights an election with a less popular Premier and government?
There’s enough in the above table to suggest that when One Nation has finished its search and destroy mission against the Liberal and National parties, there are signs that Labor will be vulnerable to a similar campaign.
One Nation looks set to win the Farrer by-election if the South Australian results are any guide. It also makes the Victorian election intriguing.
The Liberal Party have been unable to win any Melbourne seats north and west of the Yarra this century. But that doesn’t mean Labor isn’t vulnerable in its own heartland. Could it be One Nation that hammers Labor’s western and northern Melbourne strongholds at the state election in November?
Sir, is there any news on the age demographics of voters that voted for ON in South Australia?
Thank you for your great work even after coming off air!
COMMENT: Yes, available from pre-election polls. Given voting is secret, you can’t know who voted for who.
I know there are 10 booths and 2 early voting centres yet to report but turnout seems awfully low at 65% so far.
COMMENT: Add 10-12% for postals. 5-8% for Absents. Various other categories of declaration votes. Should get to mid-80s at least.
I wonder how many didn’t realise there was an election due to no advertising on the stobie polls.
(From another Michael) I had been expecting a massive increase of the Informal votes resulting from people’s dislike of all politicians. As far as I can see that hasn’t happened…. but it’s difficult for me to analyse down to that point. Hopefully Anthony will assist …. he obviously has the time now that he’s retired.
Is One Nation favourite for Farrer due to the semi-incumbent IND? I assumed it would be a 3 horse race between LIB, ON, and IND. IND should win if they’re in the top 2 (and not too far behind). ON win prob needs IND to finish 3rd. The campaign will be an absolute media frenzy, so any misstep by any candidate could tank them.
COMMENT: The Independent could win if the Nationals and Liberals recommended preferences for them before One Nation. I’m not sure they will.
Disillusioned LNP and potential ON voters will be furious with the LNP if they preference the IND over ON. You will hear the screams of UNIPARTY from Canberra. This would almost certainly provoke a huge backlash and push ON over the line.
it will be interesting to see how different the party votes in the upper house in the different electorates will be than the lower house in electorates like Stuart, narrunga, Kavel, Finniss, Hammond, mount gambier and MacKillop and i guess that information won’t be released till early may I’m guessing
I’m confused by your regional breakdown table – should the state-wise pct changes not be values between the metropolitan and regional pct changes?
COMMENT: The state wide Labor and Liberals swings had the wrong sign. The graphic has been fixed.
Can Liberal n One Nation co join and form Goverment ?
COMMENT: Not in the current election as Labor has 33 of the 47 seats. Should they wish to in the future, if together they have a majority of seats in a lower house, they could come to some form of governing arrangement. No one has tried it before with One Nation but it doesn’t mean a party won’t try in the future.
Great analysis, thank you. Miss you on the telly.
I second that, thank you, Antony, for the crystal-clear analysis: masterly! My wrinkly mates were expecting a ON surge as many of them, both Lib and Lab leaning, are planning to vote ON in the VIC election still 7 months away. Vic voters in the leafy eastern ‘burbs seem to be almost seething at the monumental incompetence of the incumbents and their paranoid secrecy. Most of the mates are cross with political ideologies: they are looking for stability, fiscal conservatism with enlightened social policy – NOT social engineering!
James (different James)
Very informative. Thanks Antony.
Fascinating analysis. We live in interesting times. I would never have thought Hanson’s ON from Queensland would poll so well in SA. Apart from the sign issues in your chart (Labor and Lib should be -2.3, -16.7 in the first chart) it does raise some interesting questions about what the Liberals should do going forward:
It’s always interesting to me that Labor and the Greens fight so much in parliament (state or federal), even though their voters preference them 1 and 2 and probably wish they would work better together. So should the Liberals try and distance themselves from ON and fight them more in parliament and the media? Or will they capitulate and try and merge? You have to think they need to confront ON head on, otherwise what’s the point of them? You can’t just rely on them to collapse now.
And relatedly, will ON outlive Pauline and now be the dominant force on the right? I never would’ve thought that would happen, but I must admit it seems more likely now. The new SA House and LC members will be watched closely to see if they stay with ON or become independents like the QLD members from 1998 and other elections.
A lot of interesting questions! As you say Labor and Greens may fight but they keep preference discipline. Liberal party can’t distance itself from ON as ON at 22% is now a mainstream conservative force. In that scenario, the Liberal Party’s best option is to stay relevant and copy the Labor/Greens approach and get on board with preference discipline with ON. If the Liberal Party try to take the fight to ON they will lose (say half) of whatever dwindling support they have left and leave the field open to Labor. The alternative is a realisation that in today’s split society, a “broad church” divided cannot stand and that the right of the Liberal Party and ON have an alliance or merger somehow with the “left” rump of the party looking for a home.
On the other side of politics, for example as Unley turns red (against a good local Liberal candidate) Labor is becoming the party of the wealthy suburbs, and less reliant on the traditional union and working class voter. This is a phenomenon we are also seeing clearly in the US and UK.
Fascinating times ahead.
I’ve noticed a high number of informal votes so far in the results, particularly in seats with a high ONP vote. For example the current informal rate in Mt Gambier is 6% when it was 3% in the 2022 election. Hammond is currently 7.2% when it was 4.2%.,MacKillop 5.6% vs 3.5% in 2022. Could this be due to the ONP how to vote cards not showing preferences, instead an image of the ballot with a ‘1’ next to the ONP candidate and this led to voters being confused as to how to complete their ballot? Or is the issue that these seats had so many candidates listed that the chance of a informal ballot is higher?
Love all your insights and analysis!
COMMENT: A lot will be increase in candidates. Mount Gambier had 4 candidates in 2022, 11 in 2026. I don’t think 1-only votes were the problem as most would be kept in the count by savings provisions. People who stop numbering after several preferences would be the bigger issue. Ove half of informal vote in SA are simply blank.
Has anyone ever tried a reverse preference count, e.g. same rules but in opposite order, to determine the least popular candidate/party?
COMMENT: I’ve seen various attempts. The electoral system elects the most preferred candidate, not the least preferred, so I’m not sure what it produces. You can try processing the NSW ballot paper data which is available for the lower house. But as it’s optional preferential voting, the results between the lowest polling candidates have two-thirds of votes giving no preference.
As a rusted-on independent voter who judges by policy and actual behaviour, federally Labor has been a massive disappointment for social justice, taxation and environmental change. Even I, a politically aware and preference-cautious voter, am contemplating giving them a massive kick in the majority. Voting for the Greens just doesn’t seem to cut it. Obviously the 2P days are over, but will it get so bad that ON has to be mine and others’ weapon of choice at the 2028 election? It seems a number of SA folks are already thinking this way.
“Labor didn’t fix the environment”
“Maybe if I vote One Nation, Labor will get the message and improve their environmental policy”
Mr Green, thank you for your very informative and helpful analysis. However, perhaps you could do a history lesson on the Labour Party and the Liberal Party and their establishment and rise to their current level. What was the Labour Party doing to the country 30 years after their formation. Likewise how long had Mr Menzies been working on his policies and principles prior to 1947 or do we not mention the United Australia Party. To say that One Nation is a protest party is folly, One Nation has proven to the country that they are a legitimate opposition party to both Labour and Liberal and at Liberals present state of internal collapse the will become the third wheel of politics.
COMMENT: I’m not sure there’s much point me going over the history of the Labor and Liberal Parties given it is extremely well covered in books. The Labor Party pre-dates Federation and was largely formed around the time of the 1890s depression. There were various iterations of non-Labor parties until Menzies formed the Liberal Party, which unlike its predecessors had a membership who participated in its internal affairs. Menzies was involved in Victorian Politics from around 1920 and was Deputy Premier before moving to federal politics.
One Nation has certainly become a serious electoral force. But I would argue becoming a “legitimate opposition” may depend on how it performs in Parliament. My background is NSW elections and political history. After its first election in 1891, what became the NSW Labor Party found itself with the balance of power in the NSW Parliament and was kingmaker on who formed government until 1904. At the 1904 election the governing Progressive Party collapsed internally and an earlier iteration of the Liberal Party formed government. The Labor Party suddenly found itself as the official opposition, no longer able to trade votes for policy. Labor finally became government in 1910. I think One Nation has yet to make the kingmaker step. The next step is opposition and perhaps government. Step one is to keep its elected members in the party, something it has failed to do in the past. Certainly given the recent Coalition defections, the party has come to be seen as a new home for MPs who have fallen out with their own party..
I’m not sure if a comparison can be made to the Greens, they are a strong third force but have yet to break through fully and become a true competitor to both major parties. Their support seems to be tied to Labor’s fortunes, with the Greens polling well when Labor has reached its peak and is on a downward trajectory (like 2007-2010 just after Kevin Rudd won federally and Labor controlled all state governments) and then losing support when Labor is on the rise (in recent elections leading up to the 2025 landslide federal result).
This is comparable to support for minor right-wing parties like One Nation – their vote is higher when the Coalition’s vote is poor but not as high when the Coalition is popular (like the recent Queensland state election).
Thanks Antony – the loss of the Labor vote in Very Safe seats is the canary in the coal mine for Labor, I’d have thought. Will be interesting to see how it reacts – the Liberal party has looked to move to the right of late, but I don’t think that would work so well for Labor, so it will need to figure out how to reconnect with those heartland voters in some other way.
On your reasonable statement that “One Nation looks set to win the Farrer by-election if the South Australian results are any guide”, do have any comment on what, if any affect the IND branding colour of Orange will have on confusing ON voters?
Thanks so much for letting us keeping in touch with you and allowing access to the best anayltics, referencing and commentary of australian elections bar none!
COMMENT: Nothing anyone can do about it. You can’t register a party colour.
Have Labour preferences helped the Liberal Party anywhere and have Liberal preferences helped One Nation in any seat they may win
COMMENT: Of the 4 seats the Liberal Party will win, and two others where they have a strong chance of victory, they led the count on first preferences before any candidates were excluded. In Schubert, Bragg, Morphett and Heysen the Liberals do not win on Labor preferences. In Chaffey and Flinders, Labor preferences help the Liberal Party maintain its lead. One Nation topped the first preference vote in three seats and require Liberal preferences to win.
Thanks Antony! You said “the Liberal Party with a lower vote may win more seats than One Nation because One Nation’s support is more evenly distributed”. Isn’t a bigger reason that the Liberal candidates received more preferences than the One Nation candidates?
COMMENT: That to, but the four seats the Liberal Party will win, and two others where they are strongly placed to win, they started with a higher primary vote than any other candidates including One Nation. In total the Liberal Party had the highest primary in 7 seats, One Nation in two. One Nation consistently needs more preferences than the Liberal Party to win seats. They are getting Liberal preferences, but the Liberal Party started with a better distributed primary vote to win seats for itself.
This gets back to the meaning of “winning on preferences”. The definition I use, and the one most commonly used in political science literature, is that a candidate who has come from a trailing position to win has won on preferences. They have defeated the leading candidate on first preferences. Otherwise every candidate who didn’t get over 50% of the vote won on preferences which isn’t a useful measure.
The Liberal Party will win fewer seats “on preferences” by my definition which comes down to the distribution of its first preference vote. It had a lower vote in seats it couldn’t win, One Nation had a higher vote in seats it couldn’t win.
It’s the same argument about why the Greens can win more seats than the Australian Democrats could on the same level of vote. The Green vote distribution has concentration in seats it can win. Democrat support was always evenly distributed.
Any chance Claire Boan in Port Adelaide overtakes ON and makes it a bit closer? Most parties preference her before ON (and Labor for that matter). Or will they not do a more thorough preference count as it doesn’t seem close?
COMMENT: Looks unlikely to me.
They do a full preference distribution for all seats this should be available on the electoral commission websites later on.
Hi Antony,
It seems like an extremely slow count so far.
As of Tuesday afternoon, it appears that no postal votes have been added in any electorate. Instead, the priority seems to be on rethrows of preference counts and realignments, rather than completing the first preference counts in a timely manner.
COMMENT: The emphasis today has been finishing the check count and re-aligning preferences. There has also been a major task to ship out Legislative Council ballot papers to the central scrutiny centre. Postal votes should start appearing in the count on Wednesday.
Hi Antony, what are your predictions for Heysen?
COMMENT: Postal votes will favour the Liberals and maybe Absent votes as well. We will find out later this week.
Do you have any insights into how the ABC is calculating the preference flows to give the preliminary results on its website? Is there a set of assumptions about what % of preferences may flow from any one party / group, based on previous experience?
COMMENT: Largely guided by past experience. See my previous posts on preference flows at the 2022 SA election and the 2025 Federal election where I publish extensive detail on past preference flows..
Antony, potentially a silly question but hoping you can shed some light into the Even now (COB Tuesday)
Low Statewide/Seat wide Vote Counts (Currently sitting at 65% statewide)
Kavel (75%) Heysen (70%) Both on the list of undecided seats are in the 70’s
Again, with the state average at 65% this is mirrored across many seats,
Is this simply that they have counted all the votes they’ve received?
Or are they focusing counting on something else?
Kavel shows 9 of 9 centres reporting primaries, 0 of 9 reporting a preference count.
Is there something preventing the preference count?
(Are they waiting for more votes to see who will definitely come second)
Is there realistically any further updates we will get on the seats or is it simply wait till the weekends preference distribution?
Heysen seems a fairly clearcut first/Second on first preference,
Only big Question mark is what happens with those one nation preferences.
COMMENT: There have been no Postal or Absent votes counted yet. There are also some pre-polls still outstanding. The final turnout will be 85-90%. Kavel may be treated like Calwell at the Federal election where indicative preference counts were abandoned in favour of the full distribution.
Antony
Do you have any preliminary work in seats where PHON was eliminated before final two & a preference count has been done, how PHON preferences fell. Or should we just all be patient & wait until the final disposition in all seats for analysis.
I come from a seat where Labor regularly on the downsized version of PHON got early to mid forties PHON preferences.
I have seen pollsters stating how PHON preferences “went” but I think that it is only polling.
COMMENT: You have to wait for the preference distributions this weekend and even longer for the flow data. At this stage it is impossible to isolate preferences by excluded candidate and party.
if you cannot count the votes and declare who won inside a week then somebody is manipulating something. This is third world democracy.
COMMENT: All polling day votes and in person early votes have now been counted and most counted a second time by more experienced staff for the official count. Indicative preference counts are also now being done. Postal votes and various absent votes cast outside of the division will be counted the rest of this week. Unlike in the UK, they do not have to be with the Returning Officer by close of polls on election day. The closing date for postals is Friday, after which the primary votes are confirmed and a full distribution of preferences undertaken. Normal timetable for an Australian election, if a little shorter than other states.
Our voting system is the envy of the world. What is lacking in this modern day in the provision of computer based voting, be it by provision of terminals at the booths or properly authenticated on-line voting. Most people trust banks to handle their money through an on-line interface, why can we not trust the Electoral Commisions to handle our votes likewise. Not an insurmountable technical challenge. Think of the savings in labour to manually unfold papers from the ballot box, sort, count often many times as you distribute preferences. Once your garanteedd formal vote is securely stored in the data bank we can know the result with a full, trusted and error free distribution of preferences shortly after 6pm on election day! Think of the saving in man hours that we are all taking trying to predict the outcome, when the answer is already on the ballots!
COMMENT: There is room for technology but not as you suggest. And we need look no further than what occurs in Austalia’s states and territorires.
The ACT takes pre-poll and some on the day votes electronically and has done so for two decades. The Hare-Clark system is a complex counting systems. The ACT always data entered and scanned ballot papers so electronic voting reduced scanning and data entry. It also allowed the complex distribution of preferences to be done electronically and the re-counts required in the ACT to fill casual vacancies. The ACT has the advantage of being a city-state meaning it is not hard to support the electronic early voting centres. Most centres are also used on polling day.
Tasmania, which uses Hare-Clark for both state and local elections, is looking use scanning in the future at the check count stage.
All states could look to adopt electronic voting for at least some pre-poll. It has advantages in being set up on a network not connected to the internet and for pre-poll is in place for two weeks. It can also take votes for any electorate. But extending this to on the day polling places would be much more expensive per vote and probably not worth the effort.
NSW now data enters and in the future will scan all lower house ballot papers. This is done at the check count stage so polling places counting is still done by hand. NSW has the advantage of optional preferential voting which makes data entry easier as 1-only votes are bulk entered.
Victoria experimented with NSW style data entry check counting for seven seats at the 2022 election and it went reasonably well. It would work better with scanning. Again, check count only, not putting scanners in polling places. In the US and Canada, voters scan their ballot papers into tabulators but the secrecy of the ballot is broken if the voter needs help to scan.
All states with multi-member upper houses and the Senate use scanners and data entry at the check count stage of the count and then to do the distribution of preferences.
You can rule out internet voting. Voting will remain be in-person, not remote. NSW used an iVote system for a decade but it was difficult to maintain as it had to fit so many software platforms. Plus people trying to fill in giant upper house ballot papers using iPhones. Apart from maybe overseas voting, internet voting will not happen again. In person electronic voting does have a place as the ACT has proved,
“But extending this to on the day polling places would be much more expensive per vote and probably not worth the effort.”
Has anyone done a cost/benefit analysis on this? I did my bit for democracy on a polling booth at a couple of ACT elections and was amazed at the archaic and error prone nature of the counting process. The labour costs must be extraordinary! The front end to mark you off to collect your ballot paper was computer automated to check that your were a registered voter and had not voted anywhere else before, but the back end counting of ballots was antiquated.
The benefits as described however are extensive, albeit that it would put you out of a job on election night, and cancel all Don’s parties!
COMMENT: The cost benefit analysis was done years ago in the ACT when electronic voting was introduced. It could be justified by slashing the number of polling places, abandoning a single day of voting and going for a voting period. They went for a hybrid solution instead with electronic pre-poll centres, also used on election day, and paper voting elsewhere on election day. That model could be implemented more broadly. We have de-facto gone to a voting period with the growth of early voting, and with the problems with counting early votes, there is justification for at least trialing electronic voting for pre-poll. But there are numerous problems, technicial, costing and above all security, with extending electronic voting to the schools and public halls we use on election day.
Further to Antony’s response, not everyone in the community is comfortable using any sort of computer / IT interface. I know people who can’t even go to speaker on their mobile phone.
When it comes to elections, we should be looking for the accurate result, not the fast one.
Two-Party Preferred Results.
Surely we need some different calculations here – and they’re well within the capabilities of South Australian Electoral Commission once preferences have been distributed.
State-wide 3PP (ALP vs Liberal vs One Nation)
State-wide 2PP (ALP vs Liberal)
State-wide 2PP (ALP vs One Nation).
One Nation has out-polled the Liberals – but do they finish 2nd in a state-wide 3PP or are they overtaken by the Liberals?
Sure, the usual state-wide has 2PP has diminished value just as a standalone comparison, but when in the full context of other state-wide results as suggested it does have value.
The other question – what is the most common 2PP match-up at this election?
One presumes it is ALP vs. One Nation?
Is that correct?
Looking forward – the Nepean By-Election coming up in a month looks to be another three-cornered contest (Teal vs. ‘Left Liberal’ vs. One Nation) – it is possible the Liberal candidate could finish third in this contest – and what would that mean for Jess Wilson as Liberal Leader?
COMMENT: It’s absolutely not for the South Australian Electoral Commission to be doing all those counts. The Commission will do the counts it is required to do, complete the primary count and conduct full distribution of preferences. For historical and redistributions it may do two-party preferred counts after it has finished its other counts.
Currently ECSA is finalising the count. They will have a two-candidate preferred for every polling place at that point. Then an amalgamation count will be undertaken before the full distribution of preferences. Once that is done, there is no way to go back and do any further counts by polling place.
If the government funds ECSA to undertake further counts after the amalgamation count, then they could be done. But ECSA would need extra funding to employ temporary staff to count and re-count 25,000 ballot papers per district to produce these counts. They certainly don’t have enough permanent staff to do it.
Hi Mr Green,
Studies show that while many Australians do consider preferences beyond their first choice—especially in competitive races—party HTV cards, ideological affinity, and heuristics play a major role. Independent consideration is more common among minor-party or highly engaged voters.
Sth Aust result show that a party where 62% + did not vote (1st) for it won an historic landslide.
Without deeper consideration it does seem wrong .
What if First Past The Post
Current primary vote leaders (who would win under FPTP, ~65% counted,:
Labor leads in 35 seats
Liberal leads in 7 seats
One Nation leads in 3 seats
Independents lead in 2 seats
Not much different than forecast results under the preference systen.
(COMMENT: But the seats are different. Look at a seat like Hammond where Labor is the simple majority winner but cannot win under preferential voting as they only had a quarter of the vote. Voting is not always about the numbers in parliament, its also about who should be the chosen local representative.)
Would there be any reason to consider changing then?
1st question is the “historic landslide” a fair democratic result?
If yes: Maybe consider FPTP as it is much quicker, simpler, probably cheaper and outcomes very simular.
If No: How do we get a better balanced outcome?
Maybe change one house where overall votes and quotas determine the party in power and seats allocatedbased on total votes and their territorial voting data? Would this stop gerimanders? Have much deeper detail but not for here.
(COMMENT: If you want an election result where the proportion of votes reflects share of vote, then the answer is proportional representation. Single member electoral systems, whether with simple majority or preferential voting, are designed to aid stable government, to produce clear winners decided by the voter. Proportional representation tends not to. It elects a parliament from which the various parties negotiate government. The recent Netherlands election was in October last but the government only formed in February this year.)
(Hammond Labor is the first preference winner with only 27.4% of the vote. One Nation has 27.0%, Liberal 22.2% and an Independent 10.4%. Three conservative candidates have half the vote between them, a single Labor candidate just over a quota. That’s the point of preferential voting, to use more votes in deciding the result. Rather than a single left candidate winning with a quarter of the vote, voters marking their preferences can ensure one of the conservative candidates wins.)
I love hypotheticals so please help me define if this might be the future or simply BS
Over time PHON and LNP see landslides as they share votes and ALP keep majority thanks to Greens.
They decide to do as Nats and Libs did so many years ago and not stand against each other, at least in most seats. Now they can focus money and efforts to a smaller number of seats. (Better if FPTP)
Eventually over decades they join?
(COMMENT: Preferential voting was introduced so that if Liberals and Nationals ran against each other, they wouldn’t split the vote and elect Labor. Preferential voting allows parties to competed against each other, simple majority voting punishes like minded parties that compete against each other.)
While I broadly agree with the sentiments being articulated (particularly regarding future risk to Labor), I do question the notion that the One Nation success at this election was due to a ‘search and destroy’ mission on Liberal held seats. One Nation had the smallest of small targets campaign strategies at this election and a party campaign apparatus that almost seemed deliberately calibrated to get them two seats in the Leg Co and 0 lower house seats.
Almost like they knew the risk of getting half a dozen poorly vetted, poorly trained MPs with no strong leader on the floor of the House of Assembly was a severe risk to their semblance of future electability…
Does Adelaide have the immigrant population Melbourne does? I just cant see, say, Glen Waverly voting for One Nation. Cant see them voting Labor either, its ripe for a Teal type independant, or even the Libs!
COMMENT: Sydney and Melbourne are Australia’s migration capitals, other cities much less.
I saw Jordan Shanks of Friendly Jordies suggesting that one reason for One Nation’s lesser success than expected, as far as wining seats goes, is that some of its supporters had unintentionally cast informal votes by putting just a ‘1’ against the name of their local One Nation candidate.
Have you heard anything about this?
Will the SA Electoral Commission publish an analysis of informal votes that answers this question?
COMMENT: He’s not correct. Under SA electoral law those votes are saved and count.
Hi Antony, with the updated results today Monday 30 March with One Nation looking to have 4 lower house seats and 1 still in doubt, how likely/possible is it that one nation tie the SA liberals? And if they do tie who would be the opposition?
COMMENT: Impossible. The Liberal Party have won 5 seats, One Nation 3. If One Nation win Narungga it will have four seats, one fewer than the Liberal Party.