Electoral Pendulum for 2026 South Australian Election
(Updated 8 December – Schubert Liberal member Ashton Hurn will be elected new Liberal Leader unopposed. Post has been updated with maps colour coded by holding party.)
South Australian Liberal Leader Vincent Tarzia has today resigned citing the pressure of leading the Liberal Party while trying to raise a young family. He still intends to contest his marginal seat of Hartley at the looming state election.
Given Hartley has a margin of only 3.6%, it is hard to see how Tarzia can retain his seat at the state election in March given polls are predicting a double-digit swing to Labor.
Inside this post I have published an electoral pendulum for the state election to be held on 21 March.
The Labor Party easily won the won the 2022 election, ending the one term government of Liberal Premier Steven Marshall.
Labor won 27 of the 47 seats in the House of Assembly. Labor has since gained two more seats at by-elections, winning Steven Marshall’s former seat of Dunstan in March 2023, and Black formerly held by his successor David Spiers in November 2024.
Of the 16 elections since 1970, Labor has won 12 to the Liberal Party’s four. The electoral geography of South Australia has often delivered government to Labor without the party achieving a majority of the two-party preferred vote.
But that wasn’t a problem in 2022 with Labor recording 54.6% of the state-wide two-party preferred vote. It was Labor’s second best result since 1970, bettered only by Mike Rann’s landslide re-election in 2006.
Labor Premier Peter Malinauskas is immensely popular. October’s Demos opinion poll had him leading Tarzia as preferred Premier 58% to 19%. The poll had Labor on 66% of the two-party preferred vote.
If repeated at the state election on 21 March, Malkinauskas will challenge the greatest landslide election record set by former WA Labor Premier Mark McGowan in 2021.
After gaining the seats of two Liberal leaders since 2022, Labor will be keen to add a third in Tarzia’s seat of Hartley. And maybe go for fourth depending on who emerges as the new leader.
On current polling Labor will win every seat on the plain of Adelaide and could even push up into the Adelaide Hills given Labor’s good result in Mayo at the Federal election.
The Liberal Party will do well if it can retain a handful of rural seats. Even in rural areas, the party is facing serious challenges from Independents, and several former Liberal members already sit on the cross bench.
Already Labor seems to be taking the opportunity for generational change, something the party did very well before losing office for a single term in 2018. Five high profile Labor members including several ministers have announced they will retire. Two decade veteran Tony Piccolo will also shift from his safe seat of Light to try and win the Liberal seat of Ngadjuri (formerly Frome).
Three Liberals have announced their retirement, and all hold seats that Labor is strongly placed to win.
Inside the post I have a new electoral pendulum that takes account of the redistribution completed earlier this year. I also include notes on some of the more complex contests where new boundaries, defections and departures complicate the analysis.
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