South Australia’s Electoral Districts Boundaries Commission is due to publish draft boundaries this Thursday, 15 August. The boundaries will be used at the 2026 state election.
Electorates need to be drawn so each seat’s enrolment is within 10% of the average enrolment as of mid-2024 (the quota). The published enrolment data includes a projection of enrolment at some point in the future (I think 2026), but it isn’t required for seats to meet a particular criteria for the projected data.
This table lists how much each region of the state is either under or over quota as of 2024 and in the future.
| Region | Seats | 2024 variance | Projected variance |
| Central Adelaide | 15 | -15.23 | 4.23 |
| Northern Adelaide | 10 | 17.93 | 23.03 |
| Northern SA | 7 | -19.78 | -34.59 |
| South-East SA | 7 | +8.07 | 4.40 |
| Southern Adelaide | 8 | 9.03 | 2.94 |
The north of the state has seven seats, and those seats between them are almost one fifth of a seat under quota, and that is expected to increase to more than a third of a seat.
Central Adelaide is currently under quota, but is projected to exceed the quota for its fifteen seats by the projected time period.
This map shows how much each seat deviates from the quota. As of 2024, no seat is more than 10% under the quota. The electorate of Taylor is 12.59% over quota, so is the only seat strictly required to be redrawn.
The central Adelaide seats of Lee and West Torrens are significantly under quota, but they are projected to get closer to the quota.
But the northern seats of Chaffey, Flinders, Giles, Narungga and Stuart are all quite a long way under quota, so the EDBC would be justified in expanding these seats and reducing the size of seats further south. But these are some of the seats with the most land mass, so that would be controversial.
The draft map is due to be released on Thursday. That will be a busy time, just over a week out from the NT election and on the day nominations are declared for the NSW council election, but I will look to produce redistribution estimates.
It used to be legislated that SA boundary reviews had to try and deliberately create marginal seats when possible to try and ensure the party with the highest share of the vote also won a majority of seats, though in practice it rarely actually worked out that way.
Does anyone know if that’s still the case?
No they abolished that clause in 2017. If you look up “fairness clause” you’ll find at least one podcast and a few blog posts on the topic.
Does SA have a large district allowance like Queensland does?
If not, then something needs to be done about how remote SA is massively under quota. In fact every seat west of Adelaide is between –15% and –8% quota.
If they do have a large district allowance, however, then discard my above comment.
@NP no only qld and wa have that clause due to the massive size of the state and that some areas are effectively for agriculture and mining. sa is small by comparison
Anyone have any predictions? I’m particularity interested in Colton which used to be a bellwether
would have been nice to know it was happening i only found out yesterday
John and Kent Davidson – I read a few of the submissions and the Liberal Party proposes minimal changes, mostly in the northern suburbs with the transfer of some suburbs like Edinburgh out of Taylor to even out the growth areas.
Labor’s submission deals with the Taylor surplus by transferring the remaining semi-rural parts (Angle Vale) into Frome district. They also transfer some suburbs out of Kaurna into Hurtle Vale as that is another growth hotspot.
Hartley and Colton cab change their nature If the boundaries are changed .
The SA redistribution draft report has been released on the EDBC website.
@James are there draft boundaries available?
yes
https://edbc.sa.gov.au/
I had a look at Giles. The proposal shrinks it drastically, covering Whyalla, and now also Port Augusta.
There has been very little change in the Adelaide seats, Heysen has gained western parts of Kavel. No seats have been created or abolished, nor have any seats been renamed. That’s all I have noticed.
@John thanks. Unfortunately there is no geodata (SHP, GeoJSON or KML/KMZ files) so I can’t make any maps.
@James the rural and remote parts of Giles have been transferred to Flinders (a Liberal seat) and Stuart (an independent seat). Giles should be even safer now that it’s based around Whyalla and Port Augusta which are traditionally working-class, industrial regional cities that are only just starting to shift to the Liberals, especially since 2019 federally).
Looks very minimalist. King and Black get slightly friendlier for Labor, but none of the other marginals move more than 1%
Frome loses bits to Stuart, and is brought right to the suburban fringe and into part of Gawler to get 5% knocked off the margin. Might become increasingly unfriendly for the Libs with that direction of travel.
Hard to judge some of the impacts in that area while Geoff Brock and Tony Piccolo both carry big personal votes.
@NP – Shockingly, according to the man himself, Antony Green, adding Port Augusta to Giles will shrink Labor’s margin by around 4%. Stuart will apparently become a notional Liberal seat in the 2PP.
James that could help SA best when the hype over the new Labor government and Malaysia dies down no way libs are in the contest