South Australia 2026: Final Polls Still Have Liberals Third

Average of final week polls ALP 37.1% Liberal 17.6 One Nation 23.3 Greens 11.2 others 10.8

If polls are accurate, Labor wins election easily making several seat gains, with Liberals and One Nation probably winning a few seats each.  Independents could win a few to several seats.

The 2026 SA election has been a weird one for polls.  There's been a very decent amount for a state election, but there were four polls tightly clustered around the start of the formal campaign, Morgan a little later, then nothing til the final days.  Also while the early polls had quite a range of figures, the last-week polls by Fox&Hedgehog, YouGov and DemosAU came out with almost identical primaries.  All have Labor on 37-38%, Liberals 17-19%, and One Nation 21-23%.  Newspoll stood out a bit more with a 40 for Labor and a miserable 16 for the Liberals.  

In my previous article I outlined a way of using the 2022 Legislative Council results to roughly look at where the Liberals and One Nation might make the final two if the polling is accurate, and assuming a swing that is two-thirds proportional and one-third uniform.  I have a few more observations on this model based on the vote share average at the head of this post.  

Of the Liberal-2PP seats that are not currently occupied by Labor, the model continues to classify most of those on below 5% as classic Labor vs Liberal (mostly urban) seats.  However the Liberals have to outperform what I estimate as a 5.5% two-party swing against them to get there.  Realistically they might win a 2PP somewhere in the range Kavel (3.5%), Hartley (3.6%), Morphett (4.5%) and Colton (4.8%), but Colton is a retirement and Kavel has indie and One Nation complications plus generally worse swing numbers for the Liberals in rural seats.  The model says the Liberals could hold Bragg (8.1%) and continues to see Schubert (11.9%) as iffy because of the risk of Ashton Hurn being knocked out in third, though I think with personal vote effects including leader boost she probably survives on its numbers.

Two seats have Labor clearly knocked out in my 3PP model, though I expect they will be also knocked out of others where independents are prominent.  The two are Flinders (20.3%) and MacKillop (22.6%).  Both of these seats set up the scenario where the Liberals beat One Nation on Labor preferences.  Both however have independent complications.  I tend to assume that winning in an ankle bracelet is a bridge too far for even South Australia's propensity to re-elect obviously tainted MPs, so the model likes the chances of the Liberals recovering MacKillop.  

In Narunnga and Chaffey my model is not sure whether Labor or the Liberals would be knocked out of the 3PP but in the first case it could be academic because of independent incumbent Fraser Ellis and in Chaffey the modelled One Nation vote is much too high anyway.  (Note that Ellis is last on the Labor how to vote card in this seat, which could make him vulnerable to One Nation.)  The model also expects Liberal 3PP eliminations in Ngadjuri, Hammond and Mount Gambier with One Nation well capable of beating Labor in all of them, but the latter two have major independents anyway, and Ngadjuri sees Labor's Tony Piccolo attempting to transfer from Light.  There is also Finniss where the model has it very close as to which of the Liberals and One Nation would make the final two then beat Labor on the other's preferences - except that that has an independent who nearly won last time.  Despite their polled vote being well above the Liberal vote, One Nation don't have a lot of clear seat paths to victory and could potentially also wind up short-changed.  

Prominent indies tend to drain the One Nation vote because a minority of the current wave of support for the party is simply a rejection of the majors, from voters who may not be that ideologically attracted to One Nation but are past the point of caring about the things that used to turn people off said party. (Notably in DemosAU, among voters who consider themselves in the centre, the party is polling 26%). But how much of this goes the other way, how many voters will move from independents to One Nation now that One Nation are making a much bigger effort?  Lou Nicholson in Finniss, having polled 19.6% and very nearly won last time, is a very good test case of all this.  

A serious issue during the campaign has been getting any kind of realistic evidence of how well the non-incumbent independents are going; we've only had one seat poll of Mount Gambier on that front.  If I withhold everything where I think an indie is viable from the Liberals and One Nation it is possible to imagine a result with something like seven independents, three Liberals and two One Nation.  But will that many indies actually win or will they do less well than in 2022?  Really not any kind of solid evidence to say.   

One thing that my model does point to is the prospect that even on a miserable primary like 17.5 the Liberals could still win more seats than One Nation and retain opposition status (even if there are more independents than Liberals, they are not a party).  This prospect also appears in the Australian Election Forecasts model though it is way more bullish on the Liberals in Chaffey than mine.  

William Bowe has published a table of regional vote breakdowns from the polls.  Of particular note here is that DemosAU - which used the actual ballot paper candidate listings - has a far stronger performance for One Nation in the rural seats; off 39% they would be likely to win at least five simply by having too high a primary vote share to be caught.  But the other two polls are not getting that much for them in the rural seats; the average of the three (31%) is about what I would expect here if they get 22% statewide.

How the pollsters go with forecasting the One Nation vote will be fascinating to see.  Of the pollsters who have polled twice, the One Nation vote has not gone off the boil at all during the campaign (on average it is slightly up).  The main trend has been a movement of about three points from Labor to generic Others, which in some cases will reflect the offering of full candidate lists.  It has also reflected that Labor hasn't had a stellar campaign, with one serious bungle going to the sensitive issue of ramping.

It is again worth noting that we are not supposed to be here - a second term government that is also in power federally will nearly always historically go backwards.  If the polls are accurate this one has the benefit of hugely popular leadership and a remarkable split in conservative ranks.  

Legislative Council

The quota for the South Australian Legislative Council is one-twelfth (8.33%).  In 2022 Labor underperformed its Lower House vote by 3% in the Legislative Council; if that repeats and polls are accurate my cross-poll estimate puts them on 4.23 quotas.  The Liberals also overperformed but my estimate gives them a clear two seats on 1.94.  With One Nation running in all seats if they match their polled lower house vote - which might not happen in various ways - that's 2.64 quotas which would be three seats, setting up a race between the second Green (1.38) and the various family and left (eg Animal Justice or Legalise Cannabis) micro-parties for the final seat - noting also that Labor are not far out of this.  The most likely balance is some form of six left, five right as if One Nation are really doing that well they are presumably sucking gas out of the right micros, or at least the latter won't have anywhere to get preferences from.  The 2022 wave being five Labor, four Liberal, one Green and Sarah Game, this suggests the left will hold twelve seats, though this might not be a Labor/Green outright majority.  

On the night and beyond

Maybe it won't be that exciting but this has the makings of one of the messiest state election postcounts in history with multiple seats having the potential to be three or four way exclusion order tussles - especially on the radar here are Kavel, Hammond, Finniss, Mt Gambier, Narungga (unless Ellis wins easily) and Flinders, there could well be others (Heysen where the Greens are somewhat competitive will also be worth the odd glance).  ECSA are aware of the possibility of three candidate counts being necessary and I understand there has been some level of preparation for this, so it will be interesting to see what we get and when.  As usual I will be rolling out a tallyboard and postcount threads on Sunday and will then update these as much as I can around other commitments over the coming several days, noting that I am working on other things during the day for most of next week.

There will be a live coverage thread here on Saturday night but at 8 pm SA time I'll be doing something different and jumping over to the Tally Room livestream for half an hour of live commentary; a link will be posted here.

Update: Resolve "Experimental Poll"

There has been an unexpected entry with an "experimental poll" by Resolve using phone polling with AI voices, with rather different results of ALP 32 Liberal 18 ON 28 Greens 10 others 11.  (The ALP primary was initially reported in text as 31 but 32 is correct).  This is a major outlier compared with the other final polls (closer though to the Morgan SMS) and outliers historically tend to be wrong but that's no reason not to chuck them in the average and see how it goes, so I've done that.  At this stage I am not clear on whether this is effectively just a robopoll by another name, or something different in terms of how it live-interacts with the respondent.  

If this poll was accurate Labor would still win, but One Nation would become a far more solid opposition, taking many of the Liberal seats and possibly a few Labor ones as well - it's a very different picture to the narrative of other polls.  

Legislative Council 2026: Huon

HUON (IND vs ALP 2.55%)

This is my first guide for the Tasmanian Legislative Council for this year.  An assessment of Legislative Council voting patterns will be updated at the end of the March sitting (for now see 2025 edition) and a guide to Rosevears will also appear.

I expect to be doing live coverage of the Legislative Council elections on this site on election night, scheduled for Saturday May 2.  However, updates to this page in the lead-up will probably be less frequent than normal. 

The current numbers in the Council are three Liberal, three Labor, one Green and eight independents, with the independents ranging fairly evenly across the political spectrum.  Labor gives up one vote on the floor and in the committee stages because it holds the Presidency.  As the major parties frequently vote together, the Government has not had an especially difficult time of it in the upper chamber lately, most notably getting the hugely controversial Macquarie Point stadium through 9 votes to 5.  But that is not to say the Liberals get everything their own way, for instance having their legislation to wind up greyhound racing referred to an inquiry.

This year sees just two Legislative Council contests, being the first defence for independent Paul Harriss in Huon and likewise for Liberal Jo Palmer in Rosevears.  

Seat Profile

Huon (see map) includes the Huon Valley, the D'Entrecasteaux Channel, Bruny Island, part of Blackmans Bay and Huntingfield. In recent decades occupants have usually been conservative and have often had Liberal Party connections.  Past incumbents have included the Hodgman brothers Michael (Former Premier Will's father) and Peter, who won it as independents in their late 20s before going on to bigger things as Liberals.   Paul Harriss, whose LegCo career was bookended by Liberal runs, held the seat as a conservative independent for three terms from 1996, in which time nobody came close to beating him.  (Indeed in 2002 there was speculation Labor's Fran Bladel could unseat him at the height of the Jim Bacon years, but he was barely even taken to preferences.)  When Harriss senior switched to the Lower House in 2014, Peter Hodgman tried to win his old seat back for the party, and was blown away on preferences by then Huon Valley mayor Robert Armstrong.  Armstrong was a very conservative independent whose voting behaviour almost never gave the Liberal Party any cause for concern.  In 2020 Armstrong in turn was heavily defeated by Bastian Seidel (Labor), the first time Labor had won the seat since the 1940s.  However Seidel quit after less than two years (see background in 2022 edition) and Labor failed to retain Huon at the by-election, with Paul Harriss's son Dean Harriss winning the seat at his second attempt.

Huon is one of the greener Legislative Council electorates, but at the 2025 state and federal elections many of its voters switched from the big-G Greens to high profile anti-fish-farm tealish independent Peter George.  George was easily elected as an MP for Franklin in the 2025 state election.  His state election group topped the poll in its own right at traditional Greens Channel area booths of Cygnet, Woodbridge and Middleton, and the combined George group/Greens vote for the state election exceeded the vote for any other party in two thirds of the booths in Huon (the exceptions being mainly in the Huon Valley).  Overall with a rough adjustment for non-booth votes I estimate 2025 state election voting in Huon at Liberal 34.9% George group 20.9% Labor 19.7% Greens 15.1% David O'Byrne 8.4%.  In booth voting at the federal election, Labor only beat George 53.2-46.8 two-candidate preferred within Huon (while thumping the Liberals who have long given up on federal Franklin).  

Elections in Huon often see "favourite son" voting with strong local concentrations of support for candidates near where they live (the 2014 contest had a lot of this especially.

Incumbent

Dean Harriss (Facebook) is seeking a second term after filling the four-year remainder of Seidel's term.  Prior to politics Harriss was a Huonville builder and project manager and third generation A-grade cricketer.  In last year's voting patterns review I assessed Harriss's voting pattern as centre-right on a spectrum running from Cassy O'Connor and Meg Webb to the Liberals (noting that this still placed him to the left of the ALP).  However I will be interested to see where he comes out on this year's assessment, as while generally joining the major parties in supporting resources industries, he also often seems to have a lot in common with the other independents.  Harriss is to my knowledge the only current Tasmanian state politician with Indigenous heritage.

Political disagreements aside, Harriss has not been involved in any personal controversies I am aware of in his term in the Council so far.  A notable event involving Harriss was his discovery of a large typo in the Government's interim supply bill tabled prior to the calling of the 2025 election, which required the figures to be amended - this even though Harriss had no familiarity with budget-speak prior to politics.  

Harriss, with Bec Thomas, was one of the two key independents whose votes the government needed at least one of to pass the stadium without complications.  Here Harriss's position has been a subject of a lot of commentary.  While wanting to see the AFL team which depended on the stadium go ahead, Harriss raised concerns about aspects of the approval and design process and the state of budget repair and obtained various commitments (his letter and the government's response were tabled and can be read here.)  (See stadium section below.)  

Challengers (5)

(Note: candidates may contact me once only to request a change to the link their name goes to, or additional links which will be added, or not, at my discretion and subject to my time.  I will be mostly offline during late April.  No other changes will be made on request except to correct clear factual errors, and I reserve the right not to correct errors caused by a candidate failing to keep their linkedin up to date. Any differences in the length of different candidate sections reflect differences in amount of available/(in my view) interesting material; candidate sections tend to be longer when candidates have past electoral form.)

Challengers are listed in order of the timing of the first readily accessible announcement I could find.  All Huon candidates are believed to live in the electorate unless stated otherwise.  

Clare Glade-Wright (Facebook, candidacy announcement, linkedin)  is an independent candidate and the current Deputy Mayor of Kingborough.  She was elected as a Kingborough Councillor in a 2021 by-election and then led on primaries in the Deputy race in 2022 with 21.4% in a field of six, winning easily after preferences.  Glade-Wright ran for Franklin in the 2024 state election polling 1126 votes (1.6%).  Glade-Wright is a former ecotourism operator.  She is often associated with the community independents/teal movement and is endorsed by the Voices for Franklin group (definitely not to be confused with Voices for Tasmania which was prominent in the 2024 election).  

Abby McKibben (Facebook, candidacy announcement, instgram, linkedin) is the endorsed Labor candidate. McKibben is the Manager of Communications, Engagement and Marketing at the Hobart City Council and is also co-owner and director of a pepper berry farm at Geeveston.  She has previously worked in marketing at Huon Acquaculture and in IT and business in Hong Kong.  McKibben's only previous political tilt known to me was a run for Huon Council in 2009 where she fairly narrowly missed out, polling 5% and finishing sixth in a race for five seats.

Michael Rowan is an independent candidate. He is a retired acadamic whose Doctor of Philosophy actually was in philosophy ("Hume, probability and induction" - very sound material here) and is now a frequent commentator for the Mercury, Tasmanian Times etc on education and also climate change and environmental issues.  In 2024 Rowan was prominent in debate about Tasmania's dire secondary education retention rates, appearing in panels with Saul Eslake and Lisa Denny.  He has an interest in the application of philosophy to environmental problems and a separate website on this subject. Rowan ran for Kingborough Council in 2022 polling 2%.  

Paul Gibson (Facebook) is the endorsed Greens candidate. Gibson is a Greens councillor on Huon Valley Council, who was the third candidate elected in 2018 with 7.3% of the vote, then again third elected in 2022 with 11% (I didn't say "re-elected" because the two Greens councillors actually resigned their seats in the leadup to the 2022 election in protest over the council's handling of the extremely controversial appointment of a now-departed General Manager).  Gibson also ran for Mayor in 2022 finishing second to Sally Doyle 44.3-55.7.  Gibson is an architect and builder and is also the partner of Greens' Leader Rosalie Woodruff.  

Tyler Petersen (Facebook, Instagram, linkedin) is an independent candidate.  He is currently Operations Manager at Rotor-Lift and has worked in hospitality and pubs in Tasmania and originally the USA.  He also at one stage part-owned Phat Fish Bar, a Salamanca seafood restaurant.  As far as I'm aware he has no prior political form.  His campaign material generally comes across to me as soft-left and services-focused and as likely to fit in with several of the other independents in the parliament; for instance he has networked with the electorally invincible Murchison MLC Ruth Forrest on Marinus Link.  

Not Running?

As of mid-March I have not detected any signs that the Liberal Party will contest Huon.  The Liberals generally only run against incumbents who annoy them a lot and it seems they would rather leave the seat to Harriss after a somewhat embarrassing fourth place finish in 2022.  Eric Abetz in parliament recently referred to Harriss as 'the excellent local member for Huon' or similar.

Issues

Issues noted on the campaign trail will be listed here.  This list is not comprehensive or in order and issues may be added over time.  The presence of an item on the list does not necessarily mean it will sway votes, only that it is being talked about.  

1. The Stadium:  Although the contentious Macquarie Point stadium has been approved, it will continue to be talked about in particular from the perspective of inevitable cost blowouts.  Harriss and Thomas obtained commitments for their votes in favour, but will the commitments be honoured in full and how can they be enforced now that the stadium is on and nobody will want to kill it off?  Glade-Wright, who was at an early stage supportive of the stadium, posted in September that she'd changed her mind and now thought the stadium was "not sensible".  Labor voted for the stadium and the Greens voted against it.  The stadium is not a particularly big issue in Huon (part of Franklin which is overall the electorate where it gets closest to an even mix of support and opposition) but we won't get away from it on the campaign trail anyway.  

2. Rural Health: Rural health was the keystone issue of Labor's huge win in this seat in 2020 but the question is can they do it again or was it a one-off Tassie Labor case of doctor power (see Macarthur, Robertson, Bega etc).  Rural health along with childcare were highlighted by McKibben in her opening announcements.  Petersen has suggested that government interventions while welcome have suffered from being top-down.

3. Fisheries: Just to have something to talk about other than salmon all the time it's worth noting here that the entire coastline of Huon is affected by the recent ban on catching sand flathead due to overfishing. (Harriss criticised the government's original announcement of a review and said it needed to be more thorough). But salmon will also be on the menu as Huon was ground zero for Peter George's federal and state election campaigns on the issue.  The salmon industry's usage of the antibiotic florfenicol has recently been in the news, with the permit to use this antibiotic recently revoked.  The salmon issue particularly pits Glade-Wright and Gibson (as candidates raising environmental concerns about the industry, Rowan also expressed concerns in answer to a questioner on his site) against Harriss who has also criticised the government for breaching pre-election commitments to the industry.  Interestingly, McKibben has actually worked in the industry.

4. The Budget: Tasmania is in what is known technically as deep budgetary doo-dah as the state's debt continues to rise.  Outside of the stadium (which is opposed in the name of budget restraint mostly but not exclusively by people who never liked it anyway) I haven't seen a lot of debate about it in the context of Huon but with the Budget coming I expect there will be plenty.

5. Cost of living:  For years the staple of election campaigns everywhere (though I wouldn't expect the LegCo to have that much impact on it), this was starting to recede but there's nothing like $2.40 a litre for petrol to return it to number 1 on the doors.  

More issues may be added.  

Campaign

Campaign style issues and incidents may be noted here.  

1. Polarised Politics?  I evaluated the voting pattern at the 2025 Tasmanian state election as showing an increase in polarisation.  Votes moved from Labor to the Liberals, but on the other hand the non-major vote moved more to candidates with a stronger political identity than in 2024.  So it was interesting to see McKibben say that voters are actually sick of polarisation and want to hear more about services.  I doubt this line will do Harriss that much damage (he does tend to support controversial industries but then again so do Labor) but what do voters tossing up between Labor and anti-fishfarm candidates make of this?

Prospects

Recontesting Legislative Council incumbents have an extremely high success rate.  In the last two cycles recontesting incumbents have won 19 times (mostly very easily) and lost just 3.  However, Huon in 2020 was the last case where a recontesting incumbent lost, Labor nearly won again in 2022 (and usually does well in the south), and the support for green politics in the area is very high, so this defence is of some interest.  When incumbents do lose the reasons look obvious in retrospect, but because this doesn't happen often it is really hard to see it coming in advance.  (I predicted only one of these three losses, Rumney 2017).  

It seems highly likely that Harriss will make the final two, and indeed if there is no Liberal candidate in a field full of at least nominally left options I would expect him to be ahead, perhaps a lot ahead, on primaries.  Assuming that's the case the question then is what the gap is and is there a strong enough preference flow to anyone else.  In 2022 there wasn't; Labor were unable to fully erase a 12.5% three-candidate gap to Harriss on Greens preferences with only 64% reaching their candidate - the advantage for Harriss of being an independent.   I think that Harriss vs either McKibben (who seems like a stronger than average local Labor candidate) or Gibson would be the most commonly expected final two here. 

However there is a geographic oddness in that all of Harriss, Gibson and McKibben have their highest profile in the Huon Valley so we could see Glade-Wright poll well in the Kingborough booths, and it will be interesting to see where the massive anti-salmon vote along the Channel goes between Glade-Wright and the Greens.  The problem for all the challenger indies is that Harriss will suck up a lot of the independent-for-an-independent's-sake vote in this electorate, and I also think he's done far more than Armstrong did to avoid the dreaded "closet Liberal" tag.   I have heard of doorknockers for one other candidate saying that many voters did not know who their MLC was, which may give the party candidates hope.  

Nightcliff By-Election (This May Be A Very Short Thread)

Just a quick thread on the Nightcliff by-election (NT) caused by the resignation of the Greens' Kat Macnamara. NT elections don't have many booths and at present we're waiting for the big prepoll which is most of the count, with Suki Dorras-Walker (Grn) leading Ed Smelt (ALP) by 22 votes 2CP 536-514 on the 2CP votes counted so far., with a small number counted only to primary  The big EVC could put this one to bed once it reports on primaries and 2CP... or it could be on we go.  

8:05 The primaries from the big prepoll are in and Dorras-Walker 1220 leads Smelt 1051 Paudel (CLP)  738 Scott (IND) 629.  With almost 1000 votes from Paudel and Scott to add, if the flow so far continues Labor will move to a substantial lead.

9:30 Long wait for the bomb to drop ... (apparently the count is done but has not been posted yet)

10:40 Finally up and subject to checking if the votes so far counted it appears that Labor have won as Smelt is 141 ahead after preferences.  Margins over 100 in general stick in the NT.

Sunday: If Labor's lead holds this will be another relatively rare case of a major party beating a non-major from behind on preferences. But this particular scenario (Labor beats Greens on Coalition preferences) is becoming more common.

Monday: A check count has increased Smelt's lead to 158 and confirmed that he will win. A very welcome urban gain for NT Labor after being reduced to four bush MPs in 2024.

Tasmania Redistribution: Draft Scraps The Franklin Divide

 

The much-awaited proposal redistribution of Tasmania's federal (and by normal standards, state) electoral boundaries has been published.  I discussed the challenges facing the Redistribution Committee in my piece Clark Must Expand, But Where?  In the draft proposal, the winner is "south".

The Committee (note, it is not correct to refer to the Committee as "the AEC" as two members are AEC and two are not) has proposed one of the more radical options that was considered in the process.  Somewhat against my expectations based on the large movement of electors, they've decided that the further creep of Clark into Kingston, cutting parts further south off from their urban centre, really was unsustainable and it is now time to bite the bullet.  They have recommended the southern boundaries of Clark, Lyons and Franklin as proposed by former Clarence Mayor Doug Chipman (there was a similar proposal by current Clarence Councillor James Walker).  Clark becomes Hobart City, Kingborough and the Huon Valley, Franklin becomes Clarence, Brighton, Sorell and the lower and central east coast and Lyons becomes, well, whatever that is.  In the north they've gone for the orthodox approach of Blackstone Heights and Prospect Vale into Bass, so I don't think anybody got their exact suggestion in full.  

The approach that has been taken is to give each of the three electorates an urban centre, which means Greater Hobart is cut in three with each part getting a hinterland.  Taken this way, Tasmania's cities are split up between the five divisions, rather than having one almost purely city division and one almost purely rural one.  Lyons is also less sprawling reducing the number of tiny towns any new candidate has to canvass.

As a Clark resident (just under 2 km from the proposed border with Lyons) I think that proposed neo-Clark makes a high degree of thematic sense.  It no longer has the old Hobart/Glenorchy divide with two halves that were both decidedly left-wing but socially quite different.  Most of the proposed neo-Clark links in socially with aspects of Hobart City very well - Kingston and Blackmans Bay with Taroona and Sandy Bay, the very green Channel, Bruny and far south with South Hobart/Cascades/Fern Tree and so on.  Having traditional Huon Valley forestry and farming areas in the same seat as the inner city does stick out but I expect the seat would get used to it.

Most of neo-Franklin makes a lot of sense too though as it extends up the east coast held together by a relatively minor LGA that sense becomes a little stretched; Bicheno in the same seat as Bellerive etc.  It's neo-Lyons that I still find to be rather odd.  Glenorchy is the urban centre and it connects to New Norfolk, but its connection to the Midlands is interfered with by passing through the Brighton LGA, the main point of which seems to be making it easier for me to pass through all five electorates in one day.  This is strongly driven by a concern about boundaries not crossing the Derwent River but I'd be interested to know how many Bridgewaterians (I'm sure there is some shorter lingo, Bridgies?) connect more with Clarence than they do with Glenorchy.   Probably to me this lack of direct connection of Glenorchy to much of Lyons through the highway is the most difficult part of this proposal.  This said, as I've been stressing all along, every possible solution seems to have something big wrong with it.  Omelette, eggs.  

Initial feedback on twitter is quite positive but I can't tell if the respondents are Tasmanians or not!  I've started the same not-a-poll here in the sidebar.

Political Impacts

Ben Raue and William Bowe have compiled stats on redistribution estimates.  (EDIT: See also Antony Green).  William finds that the 2PP impact (if that's still a thing in 2028) is negligible save that Lyons becomes about a point better for Labor and Clark close to the reverse.  (Ben's estimate for the Lyons improvement is larger.)  Ben's Senate analysis is really helpful in steering around all the chaos of independents (and the Green candidate withdrawing from campaigning in Franklin) - on an underlying basis Labor loses 2.4% in Clark, largely to Liberals and a little to the Greens.  Labor gains two points in Franklin where the Greens lose 4.3 and the Greens improve nearly three points in the new Lyons  at the expense of the Liberals.  

Ben also has estimates for state level where Labor seriously struggles in the new Clark, though that is partly because both David O'Byrne and Peter George ran in the ex-Franklin section, when probably now only one would run.  New Franklin is notionally good for the majors on account of a reduced independent presence on the east coast, but O'Byrne would pick up votes in Brighton and Sorell LGAs.  The Shooters Fishers and Farmers lose ground from there no longer being a single non-urban electorate though One Nation might look at the new Lyons still with interest as they are capable of getting votes in northern Glenorchy.   

For parties there would be some interesting decisions to be made.  For instance based on local support levels for particular candidates the Liberals could shuffle Eric Abetz from Franklin to Clark, Jane Howlett from Lyons to Franklin and move Madeleine Ogilvie from Clark to Lyons to have an incumbent with connection to Glenorchy.  Labor could do the same thing with Dean Winter, Josh Willie and Jen Butler.  For the Greens there's a question whether they would keep Rosalie Woodruff in Franklin, or given her historic support base in the new Clark section run both her and Vica Bayley in Clark to shore up their chances of two seats and find a new candidate for Franklin.   Another factor here is that Tabatha Badger is currently contesting the Greens' Senate preselection, and if she wins that then Alastair Allan who lives in the Lyons part of the new Franklin may become an MP for the current Lyons.  

For independents Kristie Johnston is the former Mayor of Glenorchy, but over time her support has shifted into Hobart City (in part because Hobart City hates the planned AFL stadium but it's not really an issue in Glenorchy).  If Peter George ran again, his support is slightly stronger in the new Clark, and Johnston and George could be treading on each others' toes a lot if they ran in the same seat, but the Labor vote is so weak there that it's plausible both would still win - creating a rerun of Franklin 2025 where out of two independents, two Labor and two Greens somebody has to lose.  Overall the redistribution is a nuisance for several of the current state non-Greens crossbenchers, Johnston and Carlo Di Falco probably most of all.  

Federally, Ben has given an estimated margin of IND vs ALP 9.2% for Andrew Wilkie in Clark, based on simply giving him Peter George's 2CP results in the old Franklin.  I also think Wilkie would do better than that, but I will have a close look at how much better if the proposal is adopted, including studying how various modelling methods fared in the seats where incumbent teals moved into new territory.  

The other disclaimer I should add regarding the boundaries applying to state level is that there have been grumblings from some supporters of both major parties about the current 5x7 seat system, accompanied by very weak arguments.  The federal boundaries will flow on to state if nothing changes with the state electoral system, but I can't yet be absolutely certain that's the case. I would hope any attempt to change the system to either 7x5 or 35x1, at least, would get short shrift in the independent-dominated Legislative Council given that no party has a mandate for such vandalism.  

The Redistribution Committee has also indicated possible interest in renaming Franklin on the grounds that its namesake is extensively commemorated and relatively irrelevant and the change in the seat's shape is a major one, but it was not persuaded by any of the suggested alternative names that have been offered, in terms of connection to the new electorate.  An anomoly if the electorate name Franklin is kept is that the town of Franklin will now be in Clark.  The hunt is on for a persuasive and preferably pronounceable new name for the seat.  

What happens now?

Firstly there is now a feedback phase where people who are displeased by the proposed redistribution can make comments (which I will probably cover in an update to this article), and then a phase for comments on the comments.  People can also in this process support the proposed boundaries or suggest minor amendments.  (It is not clear what those would be given the current draft's near-total adherence to LGA boundaries).  It sometimes happens that radical redraw proposals encounter a tsunami of objections and are withdrawn, but we will see if this happens.  My recommendation to anyone objecting to the draft is to say what you would do instead and explain you consider it better.

There has been some misreporting to suggest that voters will receive new MPs representing them once the redistribution completes (if the proposal is adopted).  The current boundaries and representative arrangements remain in place until an election is held on the new boundaries (whatever they are), and this includes for any federal by-elections that may be held in that time.  

Clarification:  In the case of a state election, the boundaries become the state boundaries once the redistribution is finished and formalised at Commonwealth level and legislation adopting the results has been passed at State level.  On this basis it is possible the boundaries could first appear at a state election held before the federal election, but given that the determination of the federal boundaries is scheduled for 8 October 2026, that would not apply to any state election held this year.  However state MPs would also continue to represent their current state electorates between the adopting legislation being passed and such an election being held.  

NB The excellent auredistribution site has been reconfigured with the current draft.

Why Did One Nation Win 11 Seats In Queensland 1998 But None In 1998 Federal?

The One Nation party (which I am on the verge of restyling Wuss Nation after its sobbing about its poor supporters being traumatised by filling out ballot papers) has been attacking compulsory preferential voting in the leadup to the South Australian election.

Linked into this I came across a narrative from Pauline Hanson which I thought deserved detailed examination.  Interviewed on Sky (and yet again, where else) Hanson told the tale of how in 1998 her party won eleven seats from scratch in the 1998 Queensland election and noted that it was optional preferential voting.  Then she moved on to the 1998 federal election where although her party won over a million votes, all the other parties recommended preferences against One Nation and they didn't win any seats.  Famously she lost Blair where the major parties cross-recommended against her.  

She doesn't in this excerpt mention what became of those eleven Queensland seats.  Every single one of those MPs quit the party or the parliament by the end of the 1998-2001 term, though One Nation did retain two of those seats and win a third with different candidates.    But my interest here is, is there really any causal link between the current OPV/CPV debate and what happened in those two elections?  Or are the explanations different?  A warning that this article is very numbery and has been graded Wonk Factor 4/5.

Tall Cories: Bernardi's Bunkum About Preferences

I was going to leave a comment about this until the next SA roundup but I feel that Cory Bernardi's nonsense about compulsory preferential voting should be dealt with a little faster than that.  Normally writing a whole article about what may well have just been a two-word misspeak might be considered mountain/molehill territory.  However Bernardi's statement has been reported uncritically by at least one media source, circulated by the party, and strangest by far, given a free pass on social media by some people who have brains.  

One Nation have also claimed off the back of Bernardi's comments that "we will make preference deals a thing of the past by giving voters the choice to distribute their preferences or not. "  But in fact optional preferencing doesn't do that.  It reduces the rate of deals as some parties choose not to recommend preferences, but many parties do still recommend preferences (which is what people often mean when they say "preference deals") and may negotiate about these decisions (actual deals).  There were several accusations about "preference deals" in the 2023 NSW state election.  

Bernardi in an interview from Sky (where else) said this re One Nation when asked about what preferencing decisions One Nation might engage with for the upcoming SA election:

One of our actual key policies this year is to make compulsory preferential voting actually optional, so that people don’t have to, or are not forced to, vote for a party that is against their values, or is against their lifestyle or how they want to live their lives.

Now, firstly here, the hide of him!  This is Cory Bernardi spouting the virtues of people not having to have the slightest imposition that might be claimed to cut across their values, their lifestyle or how they want to live their lives. Cory Bernardi is best known for trying to stop same-sex couples from being allowed to get married.  

EMRS: What Happens When You Take A Mess And Then Throw In One Nation?

EMRS Lib 29 (-5) ALP 23 (-2) Green 15 (-2) IND 15 (-4) ON 14 (new) others 4 (-1)

Seat estimate off this poll if election "held now" Lib 10-13 ALP 9-10 Grn 5 ON 4 IND 4-5 SFF 0-1

EMRS have released basic details of the first Tasmanian voting intention poll to include One Nation in the readout (I will add a link to the full report when it is up).  One Nation are in the process of registering for state elections but are not registered yet.  This follows a federal poll for the state they released on Friday.  

The addition of One Nation has immediately seen them record a substantial 14%, but this is well below the 24% they recorded in the Tasmanian federal poll, with the Liberal vote in particular holding up much better.  One Nation's gains have come from across the board, but especially from a government that was already down on its election result in the previous poll, meaning that when this poll is compared with the election, most of the 14 points is at the expense of the Government which is down 11.  Labor and the Greens are not so far off their state marker, Independents may in effect be down somewhat given that Tasmanian state polls offering a generic "independent" option tend to overestimate election support for independents by about 4 points.

South Australia 2026: What Can The Right Still Win?

Polling for SA election is very lopsided with right very fragmented

Estimate if Newspoll is correct: approx 1 Liberal and 3 One Nation seats

Off YouGov: approx 4 Liberal and 1-2 One Nation seats

Polling may moderate by election day

------------------------------------------------------------

I've been hoping for enough material to start substantial coverage of the South Australian election and it's finally arrived with polls by Newspoll and YouGov.  Prior to that there had been a string of extremely lopsided polls last year, and a Fox&Hedgehog poll in a similar vein early last week.  The YouGov poll pretty much replicates Fox&Hedgehog's finding that the conservative side is split in two with the Liberals bleeding greatly to One Nation while Labor enjoys a massive lead.  The Newspoll is even worse for the Liberals and could (if it happened) even wipe them out completely.  My estimate is that on average for the Newspoll voting intentions the Liberals would win one seat and One Nation about three, and for the YouGov poll that the Liberals might manage three or four and One Nation just one or two; it's possible there will be about as many (or more) independents as right-party MPs.  However there is a lot still to unfold with where One Nation support goes during the campaign and whether the Liberals can improve.  

What is suggested by the polls so far really aint supposed to happen.  The Malinauskas government is only at the end of its first term, but it is federally dragged, and not even by a first term federal government at that.  John Bannon in 1985 was the last State Premier to get a seat share swing at all in that circumstance.  But these are incredible times in polling and Peter Malinauskas is very popular (with a +40 Newspoll netsat).  At the same time we have what looks like a severe disruption if not a realignment on the right nationally and the SA Libs are a disaster zone.   One has to roll one's eyes repeatedly at news that "Liberal strategists" are hoping for a sympathy vote they don't deserve and trying to argue that a viable opposition is needed.  That worked so well for the similarly hapless outfit that was reduced to two seats in WA 2021.  

Farrer By-Election 2026

Farrer (Lib vs IND 6.2%, Lib vs ALP 12.9%)
By-Election 9 May
Cause of by-election resignation of Sussan Ley (Lib)

The rolling of Sussan Ley as leader of a floundering Liberal Party has led to a fascinating by-election for her seat of Farrer.  This guide will be updated from time to time with any polling news and with items of interest re candidates etc.  I will be providing live coverage on the night of May 9.

Farrer

Much of the electoral history of Farrer has been told in Antony Green's post here.  It has had just four MPs since 1949, three Liberals and a National.  Until very recently it had only ever been of the slightest interest when vacant.  Tim Fischer easily won the seat for the Nationals at the 1984 general election.  On his retirement in 2001 Sussan Ley gained it for the Liberals by 206 votes after preferences, the result being so close only because Labor ran and recommended preferences to the Nationals.

The seat has never been 2PP-competitive, only sneaking into technical 2PP-marginal territory by a handful of votes in 1972.  It saw its first serious independent attempt when Albury Mayor Kevin Mack ran against Ley in 2019.  This attempt was so hyped that betting agencies gave Mack a roughly even chance of winning but Ley won very easily, clearing 50% on primaries with a 60.9% 2CP.  

Until the 2025 election Ley had the longest active streak of wins on first preferences in the parliament (seven) but the challenge from Voices of Farrer and Climate200 endorsed Michelle Milthorpe severely dented Ley's primary vote and Ley finished up with only a 6.2% margin after preferences.  However, Farrer remained one of the most conservative seats in the country, ranking 11th on Coalition House of Reps 2PP down from 8th in 2022.  Some might think its 2PP being near the top of the list was down to Ley's personal vote but this is actually not true at all; on above the line Senate 2PP Farrer was in fact the Coalition's fourth best seat nationwide. 

Who's in the mix?

There are five four possibly competitive forces in Farrer.  Comments re candidates will be added when known but this is not intended as a candidate guide. 

* Liberals.  Will contest.  Justin Clancy (MP for Albury (Lib 16.3%)) was reported as a possible Liberal contender (setting up a scenario where he and Helen Dalton might both resign their state seats to run) but isn't running.  The candidate is Raissa Butkowski, a 

* Nationals.  Will contest.  The Nationals candidate is Brad Robertson, a former military commander.

* One Nation.  Will contest. Sooner than they might have liked, One Nation faces a potential get off the pot moment.  If their national polling is still as high as at present following the change in Liberal leadership then they would be expected to poll strongly in this by-election and failure to do so would damage their momentum and raise some questions about their standing in the polls. The One Nation candidate is David Farley, a prominent agricultural businessman.  As is common with One Nation candidates he already has a problematic past comment that has resurfaced - but this one is also attracting more endorsements than most.

* Milthorpe (IND).  Will contest. Michelle Milthorpe immediately announced she would run for Farrer again.  

Also-rans 

Interesting by-elections often attract large fields of uncompetitive micro-party and obscure independent candidates, some of whom are often paper candidates from nowhere near the electorate.  Farrer could easily have a total field well into double figures.

* The Greens' candidate is Richard Hendrie. 

* Family First (v 2) immediately announced they would re-run Rebecca Scriven who polled 2.15% in 2025.

* Gerard Rennick People First announced they were running, to the vivid interest of nobody; they came last with 2.02% in 2025.  

* Jordi Queiruga (IND) is an economist whose name in that form draws a whole three hits for me in Google.  His website calls for "Sustainable immigration" so I'm classifying him as not a teal.  

* The unregistered Riverina State Party (which supports a new state covering the Victorian/NSW border areas) has expressed interest in running but this may be contingent on its registration being approved in time, which appears extremely unlikely.  The party submitted a list of 1646 putative members to the AEC in late October 2025 but has not been advertised yet.  The advertising phase followed by AEC assessment takes more than a month and party registration freezes once the writ is issued for the by-election.  (I've heard they may have passed AEC checking prior to advertising.)

I am aware of at least one more possible minor independent but in the case of stray Facebook posts I like to wait until things get more concrete before reporting them.  

Not Contesting

* Dalton (IND) Helen Dalton is the state MP for the district of Murray, which is the western end of Farrer.  She won the seat in 2019 as an endorsed Shooters, Fishers and Farmers candidate but running a largely independent-style campaign.  She quit said party in 2022 over water issues, and was returned as an independent in 2023 with an outright majority in a field of ten candidates.  Dalton was already canvassing a possible run for Farrer in 2028.  She would have to resign her state seat to contest.  On Mar 6 Dalton confirmed she would not contest.  

* Labor:  I did not believe Labor could have be competitive if they ran and I could not see much reason for them to risk embarrassment by doing so, so I was not surprised they decided not to bother.  Independents will miss that portion of their Labor preferences that comes from how to vote cards, but it is also possible in such a crowded field that an ALP run could have squeezed out independents and stopped them winning.

Prospects

This section will be edited where needed to update it.  As of 15 March we have a messy four-way battle where it is not obvious who the final two will be.    The AEC will have a challenging task in picking which candidate pair to use for the notional two-candidate count on the night (they may go with Liberal vs Milthorpe just because those were the final two last time, though there has been one poll suggesting One Nation could make the final two.)

Farrer is a relatively strong seat for One Nation, but not super strong.  Their Reps primary of just an average 6.6% is misleading because it would have been affected by Milthorpe and the relatively large field.  In the Senate, One Nation polled 9.96% in Farrer, compared to a NSW total of 6.06%.  If their national polling swing is real and flows through to Farrer they should be looking at a primary of at very least high 20s and probably much more (because One Nation tend to get inflated swings in strong areas) - but it's not that simple.

At the 2025 election, minor right preferences did not assist Ley vs Milthorpe, with One Nation, Family First and GRPF breaking only slightly to her and Trumpet of Patriots and Shooters Fishers and Farmers preferences breaking to Milthorpe.  This suggests a lot of the voters in Farrer while anti-Labor aren't wildly pro-Coalition either and are looking for any alternative ahead of the majors (something we also saw with strong ON flows to independents in the 2022 SA election).  I'd expect on that basis that any independents that run and One Nation are to a more than obvious degree fishing in the same pond.  Perhaps this will make it hard for One Nation to get a really high primary.

It is possible that Milthorpe could get a large enough primary from many of the seat's non-conservative voters to lead on primaries, with the question then being how strong are the flows between the conservative parties and in what order they are knocked out.  Butkowski seems a good choice by the Liberals to attempt to cover off against Milthorpe.  

Dalton would have been a dangerous opponent on preferences had she run and made the final two, but with a splintered vote and having to sit between Milthorpe and One Nation it could have been hard for her to do so.

All kinds of modelling and calculations may be entered into as to what might occur here but in a rural electorate and with this being a by-election and not a general, I suspect a lot of it will be about candidate quality and the outcome could therefore be quite different from any modelling attempt.  

Polls etc

Single-seat polling is unreliable.

An Australia Institute seat poll (presumably a uComms poll) was reported on 9 Mar taken sometime between 5 and 9 Mar with "One Nation topped the count at 28.6 per cent of the total, followed by independent Ms Milthorpe (23.3 per cent), the Liberal Party (19.1 per cent), Labor (not running - 9 per cent), undecided voters (8.6 per cent) and the Greens (3.9 per cent), and the remaining 2.3 per cent favoured another party or candidate."  The news.com.au report omitted a feeble 5.2% for the Nationals.  While the media report said 64.1% of the non-One Nation voters would not consider voting for them at all ... which doesn't necessarily mean they won't preference them.  After reallocating Labor and undecided thanks to the full poll report (with a few minor design issues not helping) I estimate the primaries at One Nation 31.4 Milthorpe 29.4 Liberal 21.7 National 7.4 Green 5.4 other 2.7 (an underestimate as other was excluded from the undecided voter follow-up), unaccounted for 1.8.  Note that Milthorpe's support could be overestimated by her being named, so there's actually a good chance here that the final two would be One Nation vs Liberal, making it possible the Liberals could retain on Milthorpe and Greens preferences.  As with many uComms polls the 18-34 age group is curiously conservative looking in this poll.  A question in the form "who do you least want to win" gets One Nation 37.1 Milthorpe 29.5 Liberal 22.2 National 11.2.   

In non-poll news:

A projection tweeted by the 6 News @auspoll6 Twitter account (with One Nation very narrowly winning) was incorrectly claimed to be a poll by some accounts despite being explicitly labelled as a projection based off Newspoll and as not being a by-election prediction.  The tweet has now been deleted following criticism, including from Pyxis who conduct Newspoll.  What was not stated in the tweet was that the projection (with One Nation narrowly beating Liberal) was not even a uniform swing projection off Newspoll but was a projection of what would happen in Farrer if a general election was held now based on various (as far as I'm aware) unpublished assumptions about how the primary votes found by Newspoll would be reflected in particular seats.  There is a danger even if someone grasps that such a model is a projection of them thinking that there is one particular way to project a seat off a national poll, or even that projecting a seat off a national poll is any kind of reliable exercise.  

Other projections such as MRP outputs are of limited value too.  MRP outputs are meant to be collectively indicative of groups of seat types, and not reliable for a single seat at the best of times.  But also they are not designed for by-elections.  For a by-election what we want to see is seat-specific polling, preferably neutrally commissioned, transparent and certainly without any "aided vote" preambles.

Betting

Amusingly, seat betting has been seen.  Seat betting is not reliably predictive.  As of 16 Feb an early offering was NAT 2.00 Ind 2.99 ON 4.50 Lib 4.75 ALP 34 Greens 67.  

23 Feb: Ind 2.50 Nat 2.60 ON 3.50 Lib 7 ALP 51 Greens 101

5 Mar: Ind 1.91 Nat 3.40 ON 4.33 Lib 7 ALP 51 Greens 101

As of 13 Mar the above odds hadn't moved, a different site had Ind 1.65 ON 2.75 Nat 4.50 Lib 8.00.  On 15 Mar Ind was out to 1.75 and Nat in to 3.75 on that one.  

16 Mar: Second market now at Ind 1.90 ON 2.40 Nat 3.75 Lib 9.00. 

18 Mar: Both markets similar now: Ind 2 ON 2.60 Nat 5.10 Lib 8.00 vs Ind 1.85 ON 2.5 Nat 5.50 Lib 9.00 

More will be added through the campaign.