10:41 – I’m going to end the live blog here but I’ll pull together another post tomorrow and will have a results podcast on Tuesday morning. At the moment it looks like Labor will win a majority and could win a few more seats than the bare minimum. The Liberal Party has been defeated in all of the slim marginals but have also suffered swings in a bunch of safer seats putting them into play, while losing ground to independents in safer seats. We’ll need to wait and see whether the outgoing premier Steven Marshall will hold on in Dunstan.
10:31 – We haven’t had any more news from key lower house races, but the votes are starting to flow in from the Legislative Council count. It looks like Labor and Liberal will each retain their four seats, and the Greens have gained a swing and will retain their seat. The two other seats are currently held by independents but are open.
It’s possible that Labor’s vote could climb enough to be competitive for a fifth seat – the Labor primary vote in the lower house is sitting on 41.1%, whereas their upper house vote is just 36.1%. The lower house vote is almost five full quotas.
Apart from Labor, the other contenders tend to be on the right. One Nation is on 0.53 quotas, with the Liberal Democrats on 0.43 and Family First on 0.38.
9:49 – There are three other conventional Liberal vs Labor races apart from Gibson that are still in play. We definitely won’t know any two-party-preferred figures from Waite, where the two-candidate-preferred count did not feature Labor. We are still waiting for a number of primary vote booths in Waite. At the moment Labor leads the Liberal Party by 2.3%, with over 30% of the vote sitting with two independents, and 12.2% for the Greens.
In the other two seats, Dunstan and Heysen, the Liberal MP is leading by about 50.9-51% of the two-party-preferred vote, but there’s a number of booths yet to report. We have 10 out of 15 booths reported in Dunstan, and 18 out of 24 in Heysen.
9:38 – Labor has narrowly pulled ahead in Gibson with 50.7% with the final election night booth.
9:14 – Zooming out for a moment, Labor has gained four seats so far: Adelaide, Davenport, Elder, King and Newland. The Liberal Party has also lost Kavel and Narungga to former Liberal independents. The Liberal Party is narrowly ahead in Dunstan, Gibson, Heysen, Morialta and Waite. There are also two independents in Finniss and Hammond who are currently in third place but are competitive on the two-candidate-preferred vote if they can overtake Labor. So out of 25 seats the Liberal Party won in 2018, they’ve lost seven, and seven others are in play.
8:47 – There’s one other traditionally safe Liberal seat that is close: Liberal MP David Pisoni is on 51% in Unley.
8:22 – It’s worth noting that Finniss and Hammond are both seats where a more competitive independent candidate could be knocked out of the top two, and then potentially lead to the Liberal MP defeating their Labor rival, as I flagged in my recent post about the dynamics when there is a close race for second place.
8:15 – Independent candidate Airlie Keen is in third place in Hammond on 15.1%, with Labor on 23.6%. If Keen can get ahead of Labor, she’s narrowly leading on the two-candidate-preferred vote in the first two booths.
8:12 – I have missed the results in Finniss until now. The sitting Liberal MP David Basham is on 36.4% of the primary vote, with independent Lou Nicholson on 23.9% and Labor on 22.9%. With three two-candidate-preferred booths reporting results, Nicholson is leading with 55.9%.
As long as she can stay ahead of Labor (with Greens, One Nation, Family First and Nationals preferences in play) she should win easily. So that’s another crossbencher, and another theoretically safe Liberal seat they’ve lost.
8:09 – Let’s keep moving up the Liberal side of the pendulum to the seats, to Liberal seats between 7.5% and 10%. Labor is still leading in Heysen off six two-party-preferred booths. Labor has quite a large lead in Davenport, with 55.9% off two booths.
The sitting Liberal is leading in Black with 52.6% off two booths, but that could still be in play. The sitting Liberal in Morialta is leading on 54.5%. The sitting Liberal is leading with 51.2% in Gibson.
So that’s one clear Labor gain in Davenport, one lead in Heysen, and three narrow Liberal leads.
8:07 – Antony Green has called the result and I don’t dispute that. I think what’s happened is there’s a bunch of safe Labor seats where votes haven’t yet come in, and when you add them to Labor’s numbers it puts them over the top.
8:03 – Worth noting that, even if Labor weren’t to win a majority in their own right, it’s very hard to see the government winning a majority. They’ve lost at least one of the seats they lost to a defector, so there’ll be three, possibly four crossbenchers.
7:56 – Independent candidate Geoff Brock looks set to win the seat of Stuart that he moved to after a majority of his Frome electorate was redistributed into Stuart. While that’s sad for sitting Stuart Liberal MP Dan van Holst Pellekaan, overall it looks like a status quo result, as the Liberal Party looks set to regain Frome, with Brock’s handpicked successor Cate Hunter polling about 14% so far.
7:53 – There are six independents in the House at the moment. Four of them are ex-Liberals, and three of those ex-Liberals left the party in the last term. So far Troy Bell has been re-elected in Mount Gambier, Dan Cregan has been re-elected in Kavel and have no data in Narungga.
In Waite, the incumbent ex-Liberal independent Sam Duluk is polling a distant third behind Liberal and Labor, with another independent Heather Holmes-Ross not far behind him.
At the moment ECSA is conducting a preference count between Liberal candidate Hyde and fourth-placed Holmes-Ross, so we’re waiting for a Liberal vs Labor count that we won’t get tonight. I can’t rule out that an independent could make the final two but it’s unlikely. I don’t have enough information about how independent preferences will flow, but Labor couldn’t be ruled out.
7:49 – Labor in no trouble in their most marginal seats: Mawson, Wright, Badcoe and Lee.
7:47 – Moving up the pendulum to look at the next three most marginal Liberal seats: Colton, Hartley and Steven Marshall’s seat of Dunstan. Labor’s candidates are narrowly leading in all three. Indeed for a minute there the ABC computer had called Dunstan for Labor.
7:45 – It looks like Labor is likely to win the Liberal blue ribbon seat of Heysen in the Adelaide Hills. Heysen is a strong seat for the Greens, who are currently polling just over 20%, with Labor on 27.6% and the sitting Liberal on 42%. We’ve now got two-party-preferred figures from four booths and they have the Labor candidate on 51.8%.
7:43 – Sitting independent MP Dan Cregan looks set to win election as an independent for the first time in Kavel after leaving the Liberal Party. Cregan has a majority of primary votes off five out of eleven booths. Another blow to the Liberal Party.
7:40 – Newland remains consistent with a Labor win on Bedford’s preferences, while King is still showing a big swing to Labor on primary votes off three booths..
7:31 – The ABC has called two gains for Labor: Elder and Davenport. Hard to see Labor not winning this election.
7:19 – The first group of seats to look at are Adelaide, Elder, King and Newland – the four Liberal-held seats with small margins. We have no data from Adelaide. In King, the first booth has a 15.4% swing to Labor. In Newland, the Labor and Liberal votes are steady off two booths, with independent Frances Bedford up 7.6%. Those figures would likely translate to a narrow Labor win on Bedford preferences. Labor is also up 8.5% in Elder off five booths. All of them are too early but they are all encouraging for Labor.
7:13 – No final results yet but pretty much every race I look at is showing swings towards Labor.
6:47 – Very early figures in Frome, Unley and Port Adelaide but far too small to say anything.
6:13 – Just as a heads-up, I’ve been having some problems with my website that have caused some problems. They’ve generally been solved by clearing the cache but I also rely on that cache to keep it functioning smoothly on high-traffic nights so that may cause problems tonight. Apologies if issues arise, I ran out of time to fix it before tonight but will definitely fix before the federal election.
6:00 – Polls have just closed in South Australia. Check in later this hour for the first results.
It’s worth noting that we’ll get no postal or pre-poll votes counted tonight, as South Australia still treats all pre-poll votes as declaration votes.
I tip Labor to win after one term out of power. Four seats won by the Liberals in 2018, Adelaide and Elder and King and Newland, should have Labor MPs after this election, while Labor should also regain Florey.
Obviously Labor’s won but is the swing estimate on election night taking into account prepolls and postal votes? If not some of these predictions about the Premier losing his seat on a 52/48 2pp vote that doesn’t take those other votes into account seem really premature doesn’t it?
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