South Australia 2026: Final Polls Still Have Liberals Third

Average of final week polls ALP 38.3% Liberal 17.5 One Nation 22 Greens 11.5 others 10.7

If polls are accurate, Labor wins election easily, with Liberals and One Nation probably winning a few seats each.  

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.  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.