Black by-election, 2024

Ben,
In the table where you break down voter group by region, should the column labelled ‘ALP 2PP %’ be ‘LIB 2PP %’?

I’m not sure that primarily replacing Mitchell is quite how I see it. primarily replacing Bright is how the maps look to me. Hallett Cove, Marino, ,Seacliff and South Brighton were all in Bright and are in Black. Hallett Cove has 3 polling booths and is the biggest of all the suburbs were most of the population is.

Just a bit of context, there was a leaked video of David Speirs sniffing cocaine from a plate which he claimed was a deepfake. This was just after he resigned as leader and was replaced by Vincent Tarzia.

Despite the circumstances of his resignation, I think the Liberals should hold on here in contrast to their loss to Labor in Dunstan. Unlike moderate Steven Marshall I don’t think right-wing David Speirs really had a personal vote. Some MPs just don’t.

This will be the first big test for the new Liberal leader Vincent Tarzia. Could he, a moderate, help the SA branch get back on its feet?

After their victory in Dunstan, SA Labor will definitely have a shot trying to win the seat of Black. However, Black is more difficult for Labor to win than Dunstan, since Black has a larger Liberal margin than Dunstan and the outgoing MP for Black David Speirs has much less personal vote than the former member for Dunstan, the respected ex-Premier Steven Marshall. If SA Liberals retain the seat it will deliver a huge boost to Vincent Tarzia’s leadership. However, failure to retain the seat would be nothing short of catastrophic. The Opposition losing one seat to the Government in a by-election is bad enough, imagine what would happen if they lose two.

NP, Tarzia isn’t a moderate, why are you trying to make an old rusted car look brand new? Not how it works mate.

Tarzia is one of the worst of the SA Liberals, they have learnt nothing since their defeat. At least Speirs was honest and wasn’t playing political games just to get elected. Tarzia knifed Speirs in a bloodless coup (Speirs even said an MP was plotting/undermining his leadership) and it is obvious it was Tarzia.

I simply do not understand why some people support a party no matter who leads it, If anyone puts country first, they will support the best person to lead. not some faceless man who toppled and effectively destroyed Speirs political career. Speirs will be missed.

Malinaskas could win a landslide in 2026, I seriously think it will be opposite 1993 at this stage and Tarzia will even lose his own seat and the only seats left for the Libs will be the rural seats and a few city ones like Bragg.

Libs should have put Gardner as leader, or a woman leader since SA remains (to date) the only state that has not had a female premier.

I would put every cent on Sportsbet on a Labor landslide in SA. The Libs need to get rid of Tarzia to save themselves, He is worse than Zak Kirkup. (although I actually did like Zak Kirkup)

If Malinaskas did as Crisifulli did in the debate stake his time as Premier on the one issue he got elected He would have to sack himself as Ambulance Ramping has gotten worse since he took over and I bet will not be better once the next election is due.

@Daniel T ideologically he is from the Moderate faction, so I would call him a moderate. He doesn’t engage in culture wars.

I do think the SA branch is in a mess but whether the Malinaukas Labor government is still popular and gets re-elected in 2026. Labor are definitely the heavy favourites, whether they will in a landslide is questionable though. Out of all state Labor governments the SA government is definitely the most popular, while the least popular is in Queensland. Out of all state Labor leaders I respect Malinauskas the most, he’s a moderate so he does appeal to moderates but then so did Steven Marshall who is also a moderate.

I do agree that it’s time for a woman to become leader of the SA Liberals, if she were to get elected Premier then every state and territory will have had at least one female head of government (in addition to Australia having had one female Prime Minister in Labor’s failed leader Julia Gillard).

Also, didn’t you say you always support Labor no matter the leader until recently? In which elections since 2000 (i.e the beginning of this century) have you endorsed the Coalition? This is not a personal attack this is a serious question.

Just for clarification I’ve never voted Labor in my life since I first ever voted which was in the 2015 NSW state election (I was 18 but turned 19 that year). I was a uni student living in the seat of Newcastle and voted for Karen Howard (Liberal). I have only ever voted for Coalition candidates, my dad is also a very Liberal man.

For overseas elections however while I do usually endorse the most sensible centre-right, liberal conservative candidates (similar to the Coalition in Australia), with a preference for moderate candidates over hardline conservatives, I have on some occasions endorsed centre-left parties (most recently in the UK general election when I endorsed a mix of Liberal Democrats, moderate Conservatives and even Labour candidates). In the US it is common for me to prefer Democrats to Republicans due to the current state of the party, but at the same time the economy is worse under Biden than it was under Trump. But that’s getting off-topic so I’ll leave it at that.

NP, Well I mostly supported Labor before 18 due to parents, But I definitely would have supported the following:

Howard 2004 (Latham simply wasn’t PM material)
Barnett WA 2008 (It wasn’t healthy having Labor controlling every jurisdiction in the country and needed someone who disagreed with Rudd on various issues at national cabinet)
Baillieu 2010 VIC (Labor took Victoria for granted after the 2010 fed election, and Gillard needed a message in her home state, Baillieu was also moderate)
O’Farrell 2011 NSW (Labor needed to be punished after bringing in a Carbon price after promising not to do it nationally 6 months before, It was also a 16 year old gov + too much corruption)
Baird 2015 NSW (Baird was moderate and was a likeable guy generally, Foley was from left faction in Labor which I usually oppose unless I deem the coalition leader worse)

I hindsight, I would have supported the Coalition in 2016 (I was Labor supporting back then but I regret not supporting Turnbull when he was PM), I would have backed Gladys in 2019 in hindsight.

But I feel the coalition has tried to distance themselves from the Christian-right past in certain states and I feel some of the policies they put out that they weren’t putting out 10 years ago are more palatable, so I support LNP 2024, LIB ACT 2024, VIC LIB 2026 (If they keep Pesutto and I will be voting Liberal)

I admit I probably would not have too many allies politically as I am not tied down to 1 party as I used to be, and Australia has strict party loyalty rules (unlike USA for example) But I personally would rather put the country first, and I think that is part of the reason Independents did so well in 2022 federally.

Back to SA, The Libs need to lose this by-election to have a better shot in 2026 doing better, A loss will make them reflect because that would be 2 by-elections lost in 18 months. Labor would be foolish not to run here. I do not understand why Minns is flocking Epping, he is foolish to not run a candidate there (Not saying they would win it, but it is still ”winnable”)

Joseph:

“However, failure to retain the seat would be nothing short of catastrophic. The Opposition losing one seat to the Government in a by-election is bad enough, imagine what would happen if they lose two.”

Indeed. Not just an opposition loss to the government, but the seat of the party’s former leader. That’s VERY rare. Here’s a list of those I could find, going back to WW2:

Dunstan, SA – 2024
Burwood, Vic – 1999
Earlwood, NSW – 1978
Gascoyne, WA – 1951

Literally once a generation. The three most recent examples were in the first term of a Labor govt, while the ancient WA one was the second term of a Lib govt (Frank Wise stayed on as oppo leader for four years after losing the 1947 election – things moved slower back then). Neville Wran and Steve Bracks went on to landslide wins at their next election, so even Dunstan by itself is an ominous sign for the Libs. Losing Black would be a disaster, and one for the history books.

With a 2.7% margin and a recent poll (Wolf+Smith) showing Labor in front 60-40 in SA, especially considering the circumstances, this is very winnable for Labor. Looking at the pendulum from 2022, a 5% swing to Labor would leave the Libs on less than a dozen seats, with Bragg the only one left in the Adelaide metro area.

@Daniel T thanks for clarifying. What about NT elections?

Anyway, here’s the results of the 2022 federal election in Black:

Labor TPP by booth:
* Brighton South: 55.0% (+4.1%)
* Hallett Cove Central: 68.3% (+8.0%)
* Hallett Cove East: 64.9% (+6.5%)
* Hallett Cove PPVC: 60.8% (+0.3%)
* Hallett Cove South 61.3% (+7.3%)
* Marino: 50.7% (+3.5%)
* Seaview Downs: 52.9% (+4.0%)
* Sheidow Park: 63.8% (+3.2%)
* Sheidow Park South: 66.1% (+3.6%)

Black overlaps with the federal seats of Kingston and (to a lesser extent) Boothby, which are both held by Labor but have been held by the Liberals before. Kingston is a safe Labor seat while Boothby is a marginal Labor seat that is usually held by the Liberals. Only the far northern part of Black is in Boothby, while the rest is in Kingston.

Labor did particularly well in the Kingston part of Black in the 2022 federal election. Labor would hold this seat based on federal results with a margin of around 5%. There were swings to Labor in every booth in 2022.

@Daniel T – just looking at who you’d have supported Coalition wise in the past, while it’s all hypothetical since one can’t time travel, I am rather puzzled as to the reasoning of “feds need a kick up the backside, so let’s vote opposition at the state level”. Shouldn’t respective state goverments be judged on their own merit or lack thereof, rather than to send a message to Canberra?

Take 2010 VIC for example – at the time, main reasons to kick out the state Labor government would be how Myki ended up (sub optimal) or the desalination plant appearing like a white elephant (with water from it not starting till 2017) – though interestingly enough, the more conservative Herald Sun backed state Labor at the 2010 election. The same for 2011 NSW – while Keneally as an individual may not have been corrupt herself, she led one that was well and truly the case, and well past its use by date. Funnily enough though, oppositions will always claim that unrelated elections are a way to send a message to the government whom they of course always believe is a bad government, while governments will say voters know the difference between state and federal.

Also, even when there are same party governments at the state and federal level, it doesn’t mean they’ll always agree. Relations between Berejiklian and Morrison weren’t exactly great despite both being Liberal; there were warmer relations between the VIC Labor government and the NSW Libs – the so called “Perrottet Andrews bromance”, even if it was to the disgust of both Labor and Liberal supporters in their respective states.

Other goings-on in SA:

The ex-Lib independents who won Narungga and Mt Gambier in 2022 while on trial have been found guilty, so there may be two more by-elections coming up in safe Liberal rural SA. Fraser Ellis might stay on, but for embezzling over $400k Troy Bell is surely gone. (Now for Mt Gambier to pull its usual trick of voting for an indie who didn’t win Lib preselection.)

On top of that, Nick McBride in MacKillop quit the Libs last year, because of factional drama (infiltration of the party by hardcore Christians, thanks to people like Alex Antic). As a rural MP who’s been there since 2018, he’d have a decent chance of holding his seat, especially with Labor preferences.

Ben Hood (failed Lib candidate in Mt Gambier, now a MLC) has introduced a bill trying to restrict abortion. Just in case anyone thought the Libs were a moderate party, here’s the conservatives flying their flag, fighting one of their forever wars.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-25/sa-abortion-law-amendments-prompt-debate/104391348

The Libs came out of 2022 with a LOT of marginal seats. They only won six seats with a margin over 5%: Hammond, Frome, Bragg, Schubert, Chaffey and MacKillop. Scratch MacKillop, add in Finniss and Flinders (marginal vs independent, depends if they run again), Mt Gambier and Narungga (ind held, but see above), and that gets them to 9 seats. Stuart will probably go Labor if Geoff Brock retires, while Kavel is Dan Cregan’s for as long as he likes. Waite was a fascinating mess where Labor won with a quarter of the primary vote, but then they get a sophomore swing. With a 5% swing against them, it’s hard to see how the Libs get more than 10 seats. It could end up worse for them than 1993 was for Labor.

@Bird of Paradox interesting about the two other potential by-elections. That would be four by-elections in SA in 2024, two in Adelaide and two in rural SA.

Stuart will be a Liberal seat after Geoff Brock retires, it covers parts of Barker which is the most conservative federal seat in South Australia (though Port Augusta and Port Pirie are industrial towns that traditionally vote Labor).

Labor a chance in Black for certain, but, as I’m sure most are aware, while Labor did gain Dunstan they did it on a fairly modest swing, a swing too little to gain Black if repeated. With that said the Liberals since the Dunstan byelection have sustained a lot of damage, and Tarzia is worse than useless against a popular Peter Malinauskas and his government.

@Daniel T I agree that at this moment in time we are eyeing down something of an inverse of the 1993 election, something between the Rannslide and Dean Browns result but for Labor is plausible.

Results wise we may be in for something as close as the Fisher byelection (maybe I’m being extreme, but I refer again to the degree of swing we saw in Dunstan).

Does anyone know if it can/will be held before the new year?

Why is Tarzia so “bad”? Just curious.

Greens are unlikely to put in as much effort here as in Dunstan, and Bragg before it. Boothby is a relatively strong Green seat (and cracks the 20% mark 3CP) but doesn’t have the allure of Liberal held Sturt for long term campaigning.

The Greens are likely to have been a help for Labor flipping Dunstan. Will be interesting to see the difference here

@NP I’m sure he’s a nice person but as a leader he has zero charisma nor effective alternative policies. All he does is rehash the same old crud that Speirs tried (which didn’t get any attention) whilst Malinauskas love him or hate him, has been getting things done on all areas. There’s a reason that Labor is so strong in SA, they actually give two hoots about the state. Conversely the Liberals seem to prefer fighting themselves and although Tarzia is a ‘moderate’ in name only, he really toes the same old lines that the conservative faction does and he doesn’t stand up to them. The ridiculous abortion reform that came up recently exemplifies this, he didn’t even say anything meaningful about it.

FWIW, he’s my local MP but he certainly won’t be receiving my vote until the SA Liberals wake up and come up with some good policies.

As for Black, it’s in natural Liberal territory but Labor can get it if they work hard to campaign in the electorate. The momentum is with them in the state and they’re in with a shot, and that’s before we talk about Speirs’ controversy.

This would easily be a Labor seat on fed figures. Labor basically wins every booth. Even off 2019 results, it’d still probably be a Labor seat. Did Speirs have a big personal vote or is it Rishworth?

Rishworth is mega popular in Kingston, the Liberals will NOT win that back until she retires.

Back to Black – I expect a Labor gain here, the state government seems popular in SA, plus Bright was a Labor seat in 2006 and 2010.

Drake, its probably a combination of the two. Before spiers won in 2014, the seats of Bright and Mitchell were Labor held and spiers defeated an incumbent mp chloe fox.

@DanielT: A state or territory government will usually suffer a swing against it if the same party is in power federally. I believe the last time when a state or territory government gained a 2PP swing towards it while the same party was in government was when Labor got a slight 2PP swing towards it in the 1986 WA state election despite Labor being in power federally. Since federal Labor will probably be re-elected in 2025, SA Labor is unlikely to increase its 2PP lead in 2026. However, as we have seen in the 2022 VIC state election, it’s possible for Labor to increase its majority despite suffering a 2PP swing against it.

@notrealMingCampbell: SA Labor won 28 out of 47 seats in the 2006 SA state election, exactly the same number of seats that SA Labor currently has now after winning the Dunstan by-election. Labor could acieve another Rannslide result with just 54% or 53% of 2PP vote, rather than the 56.8% Rann achieved in 2006.

@NP: NSW Labor Premier Chris Minns is also “moderate” by your definition, since most of his policies are similar to that of the NSW Coalition. His government has even been pushed by the Coalition to adopt some progressive policies like 70% reduction in emissions by 2035 and prohibition of offshore drilling in NSW waters. His government also made some cuts to cost of living relief and even education and health in the most recent budget. I would argue that Minns acts more like a moderate Liberal Premier than a Labor Premier.

Half the reason Chloe Fox lost in the first place is because ECSA kept mucking around with the boundaries of Bright to cancel out her personal vote (the “fairness clause”). If that wasn’t a thing she could still be in parliament today.

Nether Portal: Stuart is in Grey, not Barker. As of the most recent redistribution, it’s now Port Pirie and the north-eastern outback, plus a few farming towns which used to be in Frome. The notional margin has flipped from ALP 1.8% to Lib 1.5%, but with no sitting Lib MP that’ll be one of the first seats they “lose” if there’s any kind of swing against them.

Is Speirs the first MP to have been charged with dealing coke (or any drug really)?

Labor has already announced their candidate here, running Alex Dighton again after he lost out in 2022.

NP: Milton Orkopolous comes to mind. It was one of the milder things he got done for.

And now Rory Amon

I love coke don’t dis it

@John *cocaine not Coca-Cola

LOL it was ajoke

I’ll say it’s lineball, before knowing who the other candidates are and the election date. Labor does have some path to winning.

I don’t see the Greens putting effort as strong as they did in Dunstan, partly because Black is even less winnable. What the Greens did in Dunstan was split the votes and caused roughly equal-sized primary vote swings away from both Labor and Liberal. This limited the 2PP swing to Labor. This factor won’t be here in Black.

Seacliff and South Brighton in the north are somewhat teal. Incomes and uni degree attainment rates are relatively high. People may be disgusted by the culture wars and the religious hard right (driven by Senator Alex Antic). Moderate Liberals and teal voters may be more willing to support Labor and Peter Malinauskas – someone who has taken centre ground.

Towards the south, federal Labor has huge margins in the seat of Kingston as Amanda Rishworth has a stellar personal vote. She flipped a Liberal seat in 2007 and turned it into a safe seat. There’s a big deviation between the state and federal Labor vote. If all of Rishworth’s voters voted for state Labor, then it’s game over for the Liberals.

Usually when one side scores a own goal to cause a by-election the other party wins that seat

It’s very true that Amanda Rishworth is super popular down in that neck of the woods that is Kingston. Even during the landslide of 2013 she managed to keep the seat safe after years of being marginal, which demonstrates the amount of support she has in this area time after the time.

If Rishworth goes out campaigning with the Labor candidate it could be just the boost that Labor needs to snatch Black from the Liberals, which would be the ultimate disaster for the latter. To not only lose one Blue Ribbon seat (Dunstan), but two in one year is just completely unacceptable for an alternative governing party.

The Liberal Party have chosen Holdfast Bay Mayor Amanda Wilson who until yesterday was not a member of the Liberal Party. Think the By-Election will be close but the Liberals should hang on. The Labor Party is already on the attack as she lives just outside the boundary in Glenelg.

The Liberal Party has selected Amanda Wilson as its candidate for Black.

@Damian Living ‘just’ outside the boundary in Glenelg doesn’t really fly when Glenelg is in Morphett and between that electorate and Black there’s an entire electorate inbetween (Gibson), feels more like clutching the straws by the Liberals to suggest that she lives bordering the boundary.

Not likely to the biggest issue out there but could be a bad look for the Liberals especially given that they have form in parachuting candidates in SA (Anna Finizio in Dunstan is an example, she was the federal candidate for Hindmarsh on the other side of Adelaide in 2022).

@Tommo9 Not living in the electorate does not mean you a not a good candidate. Lots of Mp’s do not live in their electorate. It would be preferable if they did. But her council does cover the northern half of Black. It is not like she lives the other side of town. Also she has said if she wins she would move to the electorate.

By chance I’m gonna be in Adelaide this weekend so I’m gonna go help the libs out. It’s pretty hard to ask mps to always live in the electorate given how often boundaries change your effectively asking some mps to constantly uproot and move every 3-7 years. So as long as they aren’t being dropped into a division from the other side of town or a privilege area to represent a working class area. Living just outside the area should be acceptable.

Greens have preselected a serious candidate after all – Sarah Luscombe, a sitting councillor in the local area who was also vying to fill Tammy Franks’ upper house seat. She’ll have plenty of motive to mount an actual campaign. Greens have started half assing or sitting out byelections everywhere else but SA is an exception.

Ballot order
1. Australian Family Party
2. Liberal
3. Labor
4. Greens

Regarding where a candidate lives, I’m guessing many candidates of various political stripes lived outside the electorates they were contesting in. I don’t think it’d be a huge issue if it they were from a next-door electorate in a contiguous urban area and just a few kilometres away. There would be a few exceptions where where there’s a geographical boundary like a National Park or body of water providing a psychological boundary e.g. Sutherland Shire or Avalon Peninsula in NSW, and thus creating an identity based off geography.

as boundaries often change it would be a bit rich for people to ask politicians o constantly move as the boundaires change. lots of people dont live and work in the same area

If you care about freedom of speech in this country, only one order to vote. If the major parties Misinformation Bill passes we will be like the UK where people are being imprisoned for reposting a different viewpoint to gov on facebook!
Ballot order
1. Australian Family Party
2. Liberal
3. Labor
4. Greens

Why does nt the Australian Family Party just merge with Family First?

@Nimalan completely unsure. To be fair lots of right-wing minor parties could’ve merged though (e.g the Victorian Freedom Party could’ve merged with the UAP or just become the Victorian branch of the UAP like how the LNP and the CLP are the branches of the Coalition in Queensland and the NT, respectively, or how the Christian Social Union in Bavaria is the Bavarian branch of the Christian Democratic Union in Germany).

Labor gain

@ NP
i personally think the Victorian Freedom party is dead. They did not contest the Mulgrave by-election or the Dunkley by-election. The CLP is a sister party for both the Libs and Nats and a combination of both parties, the NT is too small to have both a Liberal and National party. With respect to Bavaria, i think the reason for a seperate party is that Bavaria is quite different from the rest of Germany and quite culturally unique with a strong regional identity. Bavaria is also Catholic more socially conservative while the rest of Germany is mostly Protestant.

in wchihc thread were people commenting on bellwethers? i seem to have lost it

@Nimalan 100% agree, the Freedom Party was really only for the lockdowns. Bavaria is the most conservative state of Germany too, the only electoral districts that aren’t held by the CSU are a few Green seats in Munich.

@John Lyons.

Tough to call this. Speirs likely had a personal vote of a similar level to the current margin if not higher, and the circumstances in which he is turfed out + convicted and the general infighting within the SA Liberals can’t be helpful, meanwhile Malinauskas has been popular as premier. The counterargument would be general pessimism that governments are faced with causing anti-incumbent sentiment.

The one recent poll for SA was showing a Labor blowout, although that was recently after the leadership change. Still, circumstances since then can’t have been too favourable for them in this electorate.

This is about as close to 50-50 as I felt a recent by-election would be. I thought Aston and Dunstan were both clearly Labor favoured FWIW.

If I have to pick a winner, I suppose I will pick Labor simply due to the recent poll and the fact that this is Speirs’ former electorate with all the headlines since then. Under most circumstances, I’d probably pick the Liberals, but I can’t really price in speculation that anti-incumbent sentiment will hit Labor when the single sample we have from polling was showing much the opposite.

I’m thinking this race is still a toss up at this stage. It’s not in natural Labor territory on a state level thanks to the likes of Seacliff and Brighton South, even though federally Labor dominates the area thanks to Amanda Rishworth’s personal vote. But the situation the Liberals find themselves in aren’t ideal either: A popular local member busted for taking illicit substances which is bad publicity, a popular Labor government defying the national tide of discontentment, and I noticed Labor really putting in a huge amount of effort trying to wrestle this seat.

If the Liberals hold on it will be a very narrow hold of under 2% given the circumstances. If Labor wins this, holy smokes it will be disastrous for SA Liberals. Another nail in their coffin if the latter eventuates.