Not-A-Poll Reset Time: Marshall Defeated

Following the emphatic defeat of the Marshall Liberal government in South Australia it is time to again reset the Next Leader To Go Not-A-Poll.

These were the previous round's results.

Steven Marshall was a distant but substantial second in the round in which he was eliminated, so the Not-A-Poll is now batting 0/2 in terms of the plurality picking the next to depart.    

Scott Morrison led very strongly out of the blocks in this round.  Through much of February Marshall was getting around 40% of votes, which jumped to over 80% immediately following the release of the late February SA Newspoll.  This continued through the campaign but Morrison had too many votes in the can already to be caught.  Whatever the result of the next round, it will suprise me greatly if Morrison does not top the next round as well; indeed I expect he will get an outright majority.  (Weirdly on SA election day there were still five votes for Morrison and one for McGowan.)

Steven Marshall's defeat has resulted in an unusual piece of political trivia.  His is the first Australian state, territory or federal government to leave office since the previous South Australian election that brought him to office in 2018.  For one jurisdiction to see two changes in government without any other jurisdiction seeing one in between is actually very unusual.  There was a case of sorts in the ACT with the relatively short-lived Kaine Liberal Government in 1989-1991.  However even that is debatable because Trevor Kaine came to office after the fall of the Follett Labor Government on the floor of the house on 5 Dec 1989.  The Russell Cooper led dregs of the Joh era had lost the Queensland election on 2 Dec 1989, but the new government under Wayne Goss did not take office until 7 Dec.  For cases before that debatable one, we have to go back to instability in Victoria 1950-1952, Victoria 1943-1945 and NSW 1920-1922.  (In all those cases the government of one state changed multiple times without any intervening changes federally or in other states.)  

Marshall's demise also ends the fifth longest spell in the last 100 years without a change of government anywhere in the country. There were longer gaps in 1935-41, 1959-65, 1983-8 and 2002-7.  (For the records at leadership level see the previous post.)

At the time of writing it is not clear Marshall will even retain his seat in the parliament; he is a shaky favourite to overhaul Labor's present lead once prepolls and postals are added.  However if he does, and if he then resigns and causes a by-election, there would have to be a serious chance of Labor winning it.  

After implementing a Whitlam Clause for the previous edition (ie a defeated PM staying on as Opposition Leader doesn't count) I've decided this was too counter-intuitive and to take a more populist road in future.  So now if a PM loses then the poll pays out at that point, and even if they become Opposition Leader, they still count as having been the leader to go.  However if an Opposition Leader ceases to be such by becoming Prime Minister, that doesn't count.