The official list of nominations for lower house seats in the South Australian election was published late yesterday afternoon, and I have now updated all 47 seat profiles.
264 candidates nominated, an increase from 204 in 2014. This is due to an increasing number of minor parties running large numbers of candidates.
You can view the dataset here.
Six parties are running candidates in 30 seats or more. Labor, Liberal and the Greens are running full statewide tickets, while Nick Xenophon’s SA Best is running in 36 seats, Cory Bernardi’s Australian Conservatives are running in 33, and Kelly Vincent’s Dignity Party is running in 30. Three smaller parties are running nine candidates, along with fifteen independents.
There are only three candidates in Kaurna and Stuart, while there are nine candidates in Croydon.
There’ll be more about the SA nominations below the fold, but I also wanted to mention that nominations also closed last week for the federal Batman by-election and the state Cottesloe by-election, both due on the same day as South Australia. Ten candidates are running in Batman, and seven are running in Cottesloe.
It’s interesting to examine where SA Best is running candidates. They are running candidates in most of their best seats (according to 2016 Senate results), but are missing candidates in Stuart, Flinders and Frome. Frome is held by a sitting independent, while the Liberal Party holds Stuart and Flinders with over 70% of the two-party-preferred vote.
SA Best is running similar numbers of candidates in both Labor and Liberal seats, once you factor in the larger number of Liberal seats. SA Best is running in 21 out of 26 Liberal seats (including two seats being contested by independent ex-Liberals) and in 15 out of 20 Labor seats. SA Best are not running against ex-Labor MP Frances Bedford in Florey.
Labor had previously announced they would preference SA Best over the Liberal Party in half of the seats. It’s not clear if they plan to scale that back based on SA Best not running in eleven seats. We’ll have to wait and see whether Labor chooses to give those SA Best preferences in seats where they are strong (and thus the preferences won’t flow) or where SA Best is threatening the Liberal Party.
As always, I like to analyse the gender proportions amongst candidates running for each party.
Of the six parties running large slates of candidates, only the Dignity Party is running more women than men – they are running 17 women and 13 men, or 57%.
SA Best is running 16 men and 20 women (44%) while the Greens are running 17 women and 30 men (36% – quite low for the Greens).
Labor is running 18 women (38%) and the Liberal Party is running 14 (30%). Unsurprisingly, the Australian Conservatives have the most skewed gender balance, running 26 men and 7 women (21%).
The Legislative Council nominations will be announced today, so will be up on the guide tonight.
Some newspapers are picking on SA Best which indicates that the senile old men in business suits and boiler suits in the two major parties must be worried.
Nick Xenophon was preferred Premier in a poll in The Australian, I think, however this is unlikely. Maybe SA Best could be in coalition with a major party though.
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