South Australia 2026 Postcount: Heysen

HEYSEN (Lib 2.6%)

Josh Teague (Lib) vs Marisa Bell (Labor) and Genevieve Dawson-Scott (Green)

Teague narrowly ahead on my estimate of live count

The first of my postcount threads focuses on the Adelaide Hills seat of Heysen, which was the Greens' biggest target seat at this election.  What do you get if you take Prahran 2014 and throw in a One Nation candidate with 14% of the vote?  Well something like whatever this is.  Because of the slow count in other threads and the relatively settled picture for the night in Heysen I've started writing this one on the night, and it will run ahead of the tally board thread.

As I start this thread Josh Teague (Liberal) has 33.4%.  Marisa Bell (Labor) has 24.4%, Genevieve Dawson-Scott (Green) has 23.0% and Tom Kovac (One Nation) has 14.5%.  The remainder is Animal Justice 1.7%, Andrew Granger 1.5%, Family First 1.1%, Australian Family 0.3% and Fair Go 0.2% (some remarkably bad vote totals there).  The independent Granger is an agricultural scientist whose online stuff seems somewhat left-vibed, but it's also worth noting here that his total includes any donkey votes, and those will flow to the Greens at the 3CP stage.

Teague will make the final two.  The first question is who is his opponent and the second is could either opponent then beat him.

At the time of writing we have all the expected election day primaries in but are lacking 2PPs for Cherry Gardens, Echunga, my new favourite booth name Kangarilla, Lenswood, Stirling and Yundi.  As I was writing this article, prepoll appeared on 2PP and Teague jumped to an enormous lead of two votes (8822-8820).  

In the booths not yet counted to primaries, Teague is gaining a net 290 primaries.  I expect him to lose back about 184 on preferences based on a regression of preference flows off the Green vote, which would put him on 50.26% 2CP.  If that's true and current figures hold up to rechecking, with postals yet to come that would seem to be a reasonable position for a Liberal candidate - but it's close.  Through the day I will look up the past patterns on other postcount votes in this seat to see if there is anything here that would suggest Labor can overtake him.  

The other complication is who is Teague's opponent.  There have been several of these contests (Brisbane 2022 a notable one) where Green candidates have gained on Labor on minor candidate preferences (even One Nation) at the 3CP stage - because the more right wing voters for minor candidates are going to the Liberals, leaving the randoms and up-yours-majors voters to split between Labor and the Greens.  However, we've never seen how this dynamic works in a case where the One Nation vote is nearly this high!  

In the event that the Greens do knock Labor out of the 2CP I would be sceptical of their chances of getting the same preference flow in reverse.  There have been cases where Labor to Greens flows are stronger than Greens to Labor because the Labor voters are more likely to follow how to vote cards. That has been less common recently, and also in this case there is the question of the One Nation flow to Greens against Liberals compared to that to Labor against Liberals, which I would expect to be a little weaker.  

South Australia 2026 Live

START POSITION*: LABOR 29 LIB 14 IND 4

Labor re-elected with several seat gains.  Liberals and One Nation fighting for opposition status with Liberals currently best placed.  

Seats apparently changing (not all absolutely confirmed):

Liberal to Labor: Colton, Hartley, Unley, Morialta

IND to One Nation: Narungga

Notional Liberal to One Nation: Mackillop

Incumbents in trouble:

Liberal vs Labor: Morphett

Messy seats: 

Hammond (Liberal - exclusion order issue, Liberals currently trailing to One Nation)

Finniss (Liberal - Unclear if Nicholson makes 3CP or whether she defeats Liberal or One Nation if so)

Heysen (Liberal - Labor narrowly leads Greens for making 3CP, winner competes with Liberals for seat)

Kavel (IND - Schultz needs to make final two to win but could potentially be pushed to third behind Labor and One Nation)

Ngadjuri  (Liberal - unclear which of Liberal or One Nation is third, the other probably winning)

In doubt (not necessarily complete list)

Light (Labor) vs One Nation

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Live Commentary 

(Refresh every ten minutes or so for latest comments)

12:05 SUMMARY

Not sure how much more we are getting tonight so I wanted to post a summary of a night that has been fully as remarkable as it looked like being.  Remember that federally dragged state governments just don't gain multiple seats like this - this is the most impressive result by such a government for many decades.  One can talk about fragmentation of the right as an explanation but that conceals that there are voters who would have just switched from the Liberals to Labor had One Nation not been surging, hence the two-party swing to the Government (though good luck getting a meaningful 2PP estimate any time soon!)

The Malinauskas Government has won an impressive victory, perhaps a little less lopsided than was expected but so little less that they will take it gladly.  As well as retaining both their mid-term by-election pickups, they appear to have gained five city seats, though one of those is not completely confirmed, and only one of their own (Light) appears to be in substantial doubt.  They are also competitive enough in Heysen that I am writing a thread about it.

The conservative forces have been spared the worst of projections.  The Liberals appear to have retained four seats and One Nation look very strong in two.  There are two more where the winner will most likely be one of these and another two where it may be.  A key here is that new independents have generally struggled to break through, and one sitting elected-as-such independent (Fraser Ellis) appears to have been defeated, with only Lou Nicholson as a possible gain in a seat that wasn't already held by an independent (and that is messy too).  

This is a fabulous night for the more active pollsters who collectively have just about nailed it under very difficult circumstances, and it suggests that anyone who believes the national surge to One Nation is some kind of inflated poll artefact can safely abandon that notion.  The party may end up a little below its final polling, but not much.  I will declare which pollsters were most accurate when all the votes are in; any assessments posted before that point should be ignored.  

As expected while the overall picture was clear enough very early, we are left with a pile of strange and messy contests to follow in the next several days, and I look forward to unfolding these during Sunday!

(Heysen postcount is up)

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11:45 Very few booths being added now and not sure how many more of the prepolls will eventually report.  I probably won't start postcount threads for specific seats while their prepolls are still outstanding so I am now working on a Heysen thread that I may launch tonight.

11:15 Big surge in MacKillop now at 47% counted and it looks like One Nation's Jason Virgo will get this one, unless Nick McBride's preferences are very strong to his old party.  

11:05 Been scanning seats for signs of interest for a while.  In Ngadjuri, one of the prepolls has reported.  The count is still at 49.2% so I'd expect the other one is quite large.  Anyway currently One Nation leads the Liberals there by 3.9% on first preferences.  I believe that's the race for the seat there unless Labor drops back, and it is a rather big margin to close.  

10:33 Heysen will have a postcount thread.  Looking at more prepolls coming in in other seats, firstly One Nation is moving forward again in the primary count and secondly the pattern of them being good for Liberals isn't holding up.  

10:10 Legislative Council - on current lower house primaries it's clear there will be four Labor, one Green, two Liberal and two One Nation.  I would then expect a battle on the left between Labor, maybe the Greens and maybe Legalise Cannabis and on the right between One Nation and Liberals.  

10:00 Some more votes in MacKillop where the count is incredibly slow.  One Nation dropped back a bit on those but are still doing well at the moment.  

9:51 A few comments have been seen about Tom Koutsantonis saying things about savings provisions for One Nation voters who just vote 1.  If the party lodged a savings ticket then those votes are converted to that ticket.  If they lodged a split savings ticket then the preferences would split evenly between the majors, but I do not know that they did that yet.  

9:45 Prepolls in in Heysen and the Greens have fallen 2% behind, so that's not looking great for them, but we don't know what the large One Nation preference bundle does on a 3CP basis.  It's possible Josh Teague will hold on whatever happens.  

Notably in the two seats with prepolls in, the swing against the Liberals on prepoll is lower than the booth swing.  We may yet see the Liberals overtake One Nation on primaries.   This by the way is why I have not yet moved Morphett to assumed win for Labor.  

9:40 Prepolls have been counted in Schubert and Ashton Hurn has won hugely there.  Very impressive in resisting the ON surge.  

9:30 I have cleared up the seat description at the head of the post.  I have also put Taylor where Nick Champion's vote is likely to drop off a lot in doubt pending further figures (edit: and taken it out again as he just did better than expected in one booth).  At this stage I have five seats in the messy seat list.

9:15 Heysen also getting messier - the Greens sitting not far out of the 3CP and also Teague improving, so I've moved that one to the messy seats list too!

9:03 Kavel has got extremely messy now because Schultz has dropped back and could fall behind Labor after Greens preferences, which could hand the win to ... anyone really.  

8:55 Tim Whetstone looking more comfortable in Chaffey now.  It is now looking good for the Liberals in all of Chaffey, Flinders, Bragg and Schubert, so that's four.  They might yet hold Ngadjuri and have some other chances, so they look reasonably good for Opposition status at this point.  

8:40 Finally more votes in MacKillop! Also One Nation improving in Ngadjuri and now possibly competitive there. The trick would be the Liberals would be pushed into third.

8:35 Now going backwards and forwards between here, Tally Room and dinner. In Chaffey One Nation are still in the fight, currently with the primary vote lead, but I don't think it's enough just at this stage.  In Narungga One Nation have a 9% primary lead but we will have to wait for the realignment to see if the Liberals might be competitive.  Meanwhile look at the state of the Liberal primary in Elizabeth!

8:00 now on tally room podcast above for next half hour.

7:47 Overall picture so far is this looks something like the polls, perhaps a lot like them.  The ABC is already calling the election based on the heavy swings in the city.  

7:33 As figures come in I'm adding incumbents in trouble to the top of the page.  Hammond is very messy at this early stage as the big three are on very similar primary votes.  Mt Gambier has a bizarre spread with currently no candidate above 21% but Travis Fatchen would most likely be OK if it stayed like that.  Kavel has a similar mess.  No action for Frances Bedford in Florey.  The Mawson swing has moderated somewhat.  

7:10 A very large swing against Labor in the first Mawson booth with the retirement of Leon Bignell who carried a massive personal vote.  May come down with more figures.  However in most classic seats Labor is off to a flier.  We need to be cautious here because of the great change in the level of prepollling.  In Schubert Ashton Hurn is off to a good start, she probably only needs to be second to win and is currently in the lead.  In Flinders Sam Telfer is also doing well.

7:00 Votes now through in several seats.  Firstly Chaffey - One Nation close to parity with Liberals on primary so far but that's not a good start for them, they need to be well ahead there.

Flinders - not much for the independent Megan Pethrick in the small early booths, this will probably go up later.

Narunnga-  poor start for Fraser Ellis in early small booths.  

General pattern of One Nation doing exceptionally well in very small booths except for Chaffey.  Independents generally doing badly.  Fraser Ellis has very large swings against him.  If this continues he will lose, potentially to One Nation.  

6:58 Treasurer Tom Koutsantonis reporting some very positive scrutineering numbers for Labor in Unley.

6:54 Website has loaded! Exciting.

6:44 Still nothing on the results link but a spinning blue circle that I've tried not to assume is an artistic representation of the SA Liberal Party's primary vote circling a drain.  Doesn't seem there are any votes through yet anyway.  In 2022 the first votes appeared at 6:39.

6:32 c/- William Bowe "Non-classic TCP counts.LIB v ONP in Chaffey and Schubert; ALP v ONP in Giles and Wright; LIB v IND in Finniss, Flinders, MacKillop, Mount Gambier, Narungga, Stuart; ALP v IND in Port Adelaide, Kavel."  I would note of these that in Schubert it is quite possible the key point will be survival at the 3CP stage.  These are only indicative and if wrong they will be scrubbed and - where the real final two are clear - realigned early in the week.  I wouldn't fault ECSA at all if they had more than ten wrong pairings at this election!

6:30 ABC (actually the SA Deputy Premier I think!) says ECSA has set 11 seats as non-classic, not including Heysen and Hammond.  I still can't get through on the results link.  

6:25 The results link has just appeared on the ECSA website but it is not immediately loading for me.

6:20 I have not at this stage been able to find any information on who the notional 2CP pairings are, other than that One Nation has been included in some seats.  

6:00 Here we go!  As I wait for results to be posted (including the as yet unknown news of who the 2CP pairings are) the ECSA website displays this laudable sentiment: "Every vote matters and voting really is a good thing."  Amen!

Live comments will appear here scrolling to the top when counting starts.  From 8-8:30 SA time I will be live commenting on video at The Tally Room.

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Intro 1:20

Well here we are again.  The SA 2022 election feels like a hundred years ago and like a rather quaint and innocent little creature compared to the chaos monster that's potentially awaiting us tonight.  That said there were a few messy counts then too, like Finniss when Lou Nicholson was on 54.7% 2CP at the end of election night and still lost, or Waite which was left hanging for days on the question of which indie was third or fourth and whether it mattered or not.  

Fortunately the SA parliament has finally fixed an anachronism in which prepolls could not be counted on election night.  A huge boost in prepolls, roughly doubling to 36% of enrolment, means the booths will be near empty today in some districts, and the count in many seats will be a slow burner, but not as slow as in previous years.   A number of potentially messy seats (including Finniss again and also Mount Gambier) have more than half of enrolment already voted. Antony Green notes " This year there are EVCs in all 47 districts plus a second EVC in each of Adelaide, Chaffey, Flinders, Giles, Hartley, MacKillop, Mawson, Narungga, Ngadjuri, Schubert, Stuart and Wright."

Exclusion order is likely to matter in many seats tonight and it is inevitable that some of ECSA's estimates of who to put in the on-the-night 2CP will sooner or later turn out to be incorrect, with some seats needing to be realigned to the correct two candidates over coming days.  (Live numbers bounce around a lot when this occurs, which can lead to a lot of confusion).   Some seats may require more complex treatment and as usual I will be following seats in serious doubt through coming days.

Almost all polls suggest that Labor will win this election thumpingly, gaining several seats with any losses being rogue events, in the biggest exception to federal drag theory for many decades.   A couple of polls, namely Morgan SMS and especially the experimental AI-voice Resolve, have had more bearish takes on the ALP primary vote, which might open the door to a more conventional-looking government result if true ... but the opposition benches will still see a revolution in that case.  

Either the Liberals or One Nation or perhaps even both could potentially do very poorly in seat terms as a result of a combination of a small number of seats available to the right and some of those seats being claimed by independents.  There is some evidence in modelling that the Liberals might win more seats than One Nation off a somewhat lower primary vote, provided the gap is not too large.  On the other hand, there is not a single seat I could safely chalk down as a Liberal hold prior to seeing any votes.  There is scepticism from many observers about whether One Nation will win anything at all, on the grounds that in their best prospect seats the Liberal Party's incumbents are just too entrenched, but the swing has to be somewhere.  So I would think that if One Nation wins no seats or only one seat, it will be because they have underperformed their polls.  

Please note that I am cautious about absolutely CALLING seats outside my home state and will tend to only do this if I feel that doing so adds value by ruling lines under seats in unnecessary doubt.  Seats treated as expected or assumed wins may change in a small proportion of cases.

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.  Chaffey will be an interesting test of the theory that One Nation can swamp Coalition rural federal seats with previously unbeatable incumbents.  (Note that Ellis is last on the Labor how to vote card in Narunnga, 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.