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.