Update: – Friday 20 March at the end of the early voting period.
In 2026 South Australia joins the rest of Australia in removing restrictions on in-person early voting. The rule that required the Electoral Commission to encourage polling day voting has been abolished, and early votes are now cast as “ordinary” votes, the voter marked off the roll and the ballot paper placed directly into a ballot box.
Previously early votes were placed in declaration envelopes that needed to be checked against the roll before opening. That could only be done in the week after election day, preventing the counting of early votes on election night.
Almost as importantly for knowing the result on election night in 2026, South Australia will join the rest of the nation in allowing early votes to be counted and reported on election night.
Given the huge surge in early voting at the 2026 election, there is likely to be a gap between the reporting of polling place results, and the reporting of the much larger EVC counts later in the evening.
The number of early voting centres (EVCs) have been increased from 22 in 2018 to 37 in 2022 and 59 in 2026. This year there are EVCs in all 47 districts plus a second EVC in each of Adelaide, Chaffey, Flinders, Giles, Hartley, MacKillop, Mawson, Narungga, Ngadjuri, Schubert, Stuart and Wright.
And the numbers reported so far show a huge increase in early voting in 2026.
- By the end of early voting on Friday 20 19 March, there had been 466,364 early votes cast compared to a final tally of 212,466 in 2022. 35.4% of enrolled voters have already voted at EVCs with one day of early voting to come, compared to a final tally of 16.8% in 2022. There were 93,016 pre-polls issued today. (There is a discrepancy of about 11,000 votes in my calculations from the table of early votes in the Electoral Commission website compared to the Commission’s total.)
- Applications for postal votes have closed. 174,121 have been received, 13.2% of enrolled voters. In 2022 there were a total of 171,687 applications representing 13.6% of enrolment which is a small decline in postal voting.
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There are graphs and more information on early and postal voting in 2022 inside the post.
Statistics on Early Voting in 2022
- There were 37 early voting centres in 2022 compared to 22 in 2018.
- A total of 212,466 Early votes were taken representing 18.6% of the total votes or 16.4% of enrolment.
- This was a 76% increase of Early voting compared to 2018.
- Over the last four elections Early voting as a percentage of total votes increased from 3.7% in 2010, 7.8% in 2014, 11.0% in 2018 and 18.6% in 2022.
Statistics on Postal Voting in 2022
Some relevant numbers about Postal Voting in 2022.
- 171,687 applications were received, a 66.7% increase on 2018.
- 159,681 voting packs were dispatched.
- 12,006 applications were rejected (7.0%), most due to more than one postal application being lodged, and around one fifth for having been received after the closing date for applications.
- 129,157 postal votes were returned.
- 7,788 returned postal votes were rejected (5.7%) mostly due to problems with signatures or witnessing.
- 945 postal votes were received after the closing date for return one week after the electiion.
- Of 1,261 overseas postal vote packs dispatched, only 2 were returned.
Given the dramatic rise in early voting centres, do you think it’s worth having those votes counted on Election Day, with the results off each EVC held until (say) an hour after the polls close?
My thinking is that it would speed up the count (at least, it would in my head), and allow for less of the “we need to wait for the pre-polls to come in” discussion.
Obviously, this wouldn’t work for postal votes, as they are still coming in on Election Day, but I’m looking at this as a national issue.
COMMENT: The issue has undergone discussion in all jurisdictions. At this stage the consensus is that ballot boxes can be opened before 6pm, with ballot papers removed, unfolded and some initial sorting undertaken. But there is no counting until after 6pm. There is great resistance to real counting being done before 6pm.
Thank you for making this information available, Antony. It’s fascinating. Were it possible, an age breakdown by early / postal / on the day analysis would be interesting.
COMMENT: That’s is only possible if the Electoral Commission were to process the roll mark-off files and release an age break down. I think that is highly unlikely.
This was a ridiculus. The postal votes should have been sent 2 weeks earlier. We tried to get a pre vote done before we went away on 25th February but could not so they sent the forms up to Airlie beach were we were until the 18th of March and still had not arrived so we had to drive back to Adelaide to vote ! What a joke. A typical incompetent government run organisation. Get your acts together! Not good enough.
COMMENT: Nominations did not close until 2 March so voting before then was impossible. The first postal vote pack would have been sent out later that week. If you had to apply by post then your postal vote relied twice on the postal service. It is always best to apply for the postal vote on-line. Postal voting is increasingly hostage to the slower postal delivery times of Australia Post.
89% of registered voters actually cast a valid vote in 2022 State election. It will be interesting to see if apathy increases this % or being disgruntled makes them come out and cast a vote. At last Federal election the percentage who failed to vote was closer to 22%. That’s 4 million!!
COMMENT: Turnout at the Federal election was 90.7% so where you conjure a non-voter figure of 22% from is a little beyond me.
Will you miss just a little bit doing the call of the card on Saturday?
COMMENT: Yes. But I so do not miss the two days of rehearsals before.
Antony what are your thoughts on linking the advertising blackout with the commencement of early voting, together with a requirement to publish election policies prior to early voting commencement? Early voting is certainly convenient but parties were still announcing policies, and the final leaders debate was conducted well after Early Voting Centres opened.
COMMENT: The advertising blackout is a federal law that applies to radio and television only, not to newspapers or internet. It is not state law and can’t be tied to pre-poll voting periods. Especially as all the states have different rules on the period for pre-poll and postal voting.
As to policies, how do you write a law to define what a policy is, let alone what areas they must cover?
Thanks for the breakdown, very interesting!
I was an international postal vote in 2022, despite applying online when applications opened, the ballot paper arrived the day after the election. Not surprised that only two were returned and agree with the comment we are sadly hostage to the snail mail.
Antony, why did parties have to submit a how-to-vote ticket? Surely these don’t effect how preferences are counted.
COMMENT: South Australia, like Victoria, NSW and Queensland, requires material to be distributed outside polling places to be registered. If you mean the registered ticket, it is only a savings provision for 2-3% of votes that would otherwise be informal. A party doesn’t have to lodge a savings provision ticket but it means the ticket isn’t available to save votes.
Early voting has increased because remote areas got told they can’t vote on the day. Then there was voting made available. It was not well communicated but this would have increased your early voting statistics.
COMMENT: The increase in early voting has overwhelmingly been in urban areas and regional cities.
Hi Antony!
I’m wondering if you can help me understand what happens when voters only place their first preference above the line on the Legislative Council ballot paper? I’ve read a few things about this today… like that those votes are put aside for counting through the week. Is that right? And if so, why? They are still primary votes.
Also, during the count last night on the ABC, someone said that the preferences for those votes will be split between the 2 major parties… but what does that mean exactly? It looks like we have a new major party, for a start!
I would appreciate any insight you can offer!
COMMENT: You are talking about two different things.
If you put a single ‘1’ above the line on the Legislative Council ballot paper, the vote counts for the candidates of that party but for no one else. The vote has no preferences to other parties or candidates. If you put further preferences above the line it would have preferences for those other parties in order. In SA, two-thirds of votes have only a single ‘1’, the rest have preferences which are data entered to conduct the count.
I think in your second paragraph you are referring to lower house ticket votes. In the lower house, if you do not number all the squares, your vote is informal. But the vote can be ‘saved’ and counted as informal by the ticket votes. If you voted ‘1’ for a party and did not number other squares, your vote is saved by the ticket being used to imply preferences for the ballot paper. If a party lodged a split ticket, saved votes would be split equally between the shown preferences of the two tickets.
Only about 2-3% of votes are saved by this method and most of those votes never have to be distributed as preferences as the vote’s first preferences was for one of the final two candidates in the contest.