LIB 8.0%
Incumbent MP
Steve Murray, since 2018.
Geography
Southern Adelaide. Davenport covers Aberfoyle Park, Bedford Park, Chandlers Hill, Darlington, Flagstaff Hill, and O’Halloran Hill.
Redistribution
Davenport lost Bellevue Heights to Waite and Cherry Gardens to Heysen, and gained Darlington and O’Halloran Hill from Black. These changes reduced the Liberal margin from 8.8% to 8.0%.
History
The electorate of Davenport has existed since the 1970 election, and has always been won by the Liberal Party.
The seat was first held in 1970 by Liberal and Country League MP Joyce Steele. Steele had been elected as the first woman in the House of Assembly in 1959, winning the seat of Burnside. She served as Minister for Education from 1968 to 1969, and shifted to the new seat of Davenport in 1970.
In 1973, Steele announced her retirement in the face of an impending preselection threat from Dean Brown. Brown won the seat.
Brown held Davenport throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, until the 1985 election. Brown served as a minister from 1979 to 1982, and in 1982 was unsuccessful in a bid to serve as Liberal leader after the party lost power, losing to John Olsen.
Prior to the 1985 election, the neighbouring seat of Fisher shifted, and the member for Fisher, Stan Evans, challenged Brown for preselection in Davenport. Brown won preselection, but lost the election to Evans, running as an independent.
Brown returned to politics at the 1992 Alexandra by-election, in a bid by the Liberal Party to bring both himself and his rival Olsen back into the state parliament. Brown was elected Liberal leader shortly afterwards, and led the Liberal Party to victory in 1993, winning the new seat of Finniss.
Brown served as Premier from 1993 until his deposition by Olsen in 1996. He later served as Deputy Premier from 2001 to 2002, and then as Deputy Leader of the Opposition until 2005, retiring in 2006.
Stan Evans rejoined the Liberal Party shortly after the 1985 election, and won re-election in 1989. He retired in 1993.
Stan Evans was succeeded in 1993 by his son, Iain Evans. Evans served as a minister in the Olsen and Kerin governments from 1997 to 2002. He then served as deputy leader of the opposition from 2005 until the 2006 state election. He was elected Liberal leader following the party’s landslide defeat in 2006, but barely lasted a year before losing the job in April 2007.
Evans was re-elected in 2010, after a failed bid to win preselection for the federal seat of Mayo for the 2008 by-election. He was re-elected again in 2014, and retired in late 2014.
The Liberal Party’s Sam Duluk won the 2015 by-election.
The redistribution prior to the 2018 election shifted a large part of Davenport into Waite, and Duluk switched seats. Liberal candidate Steve Murray won Davenport.
- Dan Golding (Independent Local like you)
- John Photakis (Greens)
- Erin Thompson (Labor)
- Steve Murray (Liberal)
Assessment
Davenport is a reasonably safe Liberal seat.
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Steve Murray | Liberal | 9,306 | 42.1 | -0.3 | 42.3 |
| Jonette Thorsteinsen | Labor | 5,275 | 23.9 | +3.8 | 25.6 |
| Karen Hockley | SA-Best | 4,604 | 20.8 | +20.8 | 17.6 |
| John Photakis | Greens | 1,600 | 7.2 | -0.2 | 7.3 |
| Dan Golding | Independent | 1,317 | 6.0 | +6.0 | 6.4 |
| Others | 0.9 | ||||
| Informal | 792 | 3.5 |
2018 two-party-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Steve Murray | Liberal | 12,992 | 58.8 | -0.7 | 58.0 |
| Jonette Thorsteinsen | Labor | 9,110 | 41.2 | +0.7 | 42.0 |
Booths in Davenport have been divided into three areas: central, east and west.
The Liberal Party’s two-party-preferred vote ranged from 52.4% in the west to 60.8% in the east.
| Voter group | SAB prim % | LIB 2PP % | Total votes | % of votes |
| Central | 21.4 | 58.8 | 8,634 | 36.8 |
| West | 7.1 | 52.4 | 4,649 | 19.8 |
| East | 19.1 | 60.8 | 4,624 | 19.7 |
| Other votes | 19.0 | 59.3 | 5,527 | 23.6 |
Election results in Davenport at the 2018 South Australian state election
Toggle between two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for the Liberal Party, Labor and SA-Best.
Davenport has been talked up as a potential Labor gain. That sounds strange given its always been a safe Liberal seat. However, the redistribution before last radically redrew Davenport from its old location in the foothills to a more outer suburban seat. (It took more voters from the abolished Fisher – a seat that had changed hands a few times – than it retained from Davenport.) The latest redistribution has continued that trend.
What happened here? I know much of the old Fisher, which was Liberal leaning rather than safe Liberal, is now in Davenport, but was the sitting Liberal MP a dunce? I live in Perth so not that familiar with local issues.