South Australia 2026: Postcount Summary, Links Hub and Basic 2CP Contests

SEATS WON ALP 34 Lib 5 ON 4 IND 4

Seats covered

Finniss (Liberal) - Liberal vs One Nation vs IND, IND has won from fourth

Kavel (IND vacancy) - Labor vs IND vs One Nation, IND stayed in top two and won easily

Hammond (Liberal) - ON win staying in top two and beating Labor on preferences

Heysen (Liberal) - Liberal vs ALP or Green, Greens narrowly missed final two with Liberal defeating Labor (Liberal probably would have won anyway)

Light (Labor) - close but Labor win

Mackillop (notional Liberal) - One Nation narrow win over Liberal

Narungga (IND) - One Nation appears to have very narrowly won subject to recount.

Morphett (Liberal) - narrow Labor win

Ngadjuri  One Nation win.  

LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL  4 ALP 3 ON 2 Lib 1 Green,  ALP currently strongly leads for final seat.

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Welcome to my main 2026 South Australian election postcount thread.  The election has turned out much like most of the final polls suggested - I have a summary of the state of play at the end of election night on last night's thread.  The big picture is clear, a huge victory for the Malinauskas government, and the divided conservative parties fighting over slightly more scraps than expected in light of a not that great showing by independents.  

This page will cover straightforward contests which will be unrolled through the day.  I have already put a postcount thread up for Heysen thanks to the speed of its election night count.  I may wait for prepolls before putting up detailed projection threads for Hammond and Ngadjuri (which both seem to be about which of the Liberals and One Nation knocks out the other, with the latter looking well placed in both) and also the serious messes in Finniss and Kavel, but I will see how I go for time there.  For the Legislative Council the count is at this stage very incomplete and I may do a thread when it reaches a reasonable percentage counted.  For Morphett I expect the prepolls to put it to bed but I will wait for them before deciding whether it needs covering.  

This page will include coverage of any seat that is a straight-up two-candidate contest, with or without realignment.

General Theme: Savings Provisions

I should add a note on something that's been the subject of some discussion re One Nation - savings provisions.  In South Australia otherwise informal votes can be converted into a party savings ticket that is lodged with ECSA.  The argument being made is that since One Nation issued open how to vote cards, many of their voters may have voted just 1, and these votes may be lurking in the informal pile to spring forth and boost One Nation prospects.  I'm actually not sure if that is how the just-1s are treated on the night but in any case I doubt this is going to be a very big thing.  The overall informal rate is running at just 4.1%, which is up only 0.9% on 2022, and some of that increase would be caused by voters getting confused by increased candidate numbers.  So I just don't think there are that many just-1s to save.  

General Theme: Realignments and Incorrect 2CPs

In many seats the ECSA has picked the wrong pair of candidates for the indicative 2CP.  This was to be expected but the scale of One Nation running second in safe Labor seats has taken them by surprise.  At least some of these seats will be realigned booth by booth starting Monday,  While the realignment is ongoing some of the booths being realigned will bounce around a lot and 2CP figures will be unreliable at various times (even projections off them can run into trouble).  Eventually they'll settle down.

Along with the various complex seats discussed here, realignments will be needed to confirm apparent One Nation wins in MacKillop and Narungga (see below).  

The ECSA site continuing to display leaders in irrelevant 2CP pairings as leaders (eg Rebekah Rosser in MacKillop) has resulted in some inaccurate complaints about preferential voting from One Nation supporters, conspiracy theorists and sundry twitter angry ants (these categories being far from mutually exclusive).  The final two in MacKillop will not be Rosser vs McBride so that indicative result is irrelevant.  As of Monday 23rd afternoon these incorrect pairings were removed, in fact only 14/47 2CP pairings remained.  

As of the evening of Monday 23rd, realignments had commenced in several seats, confirming the Liberal victory in Flinders and Travis Fatchen in Mt Gambier.  No in-doubt seats had commenced realignment at that point.  ECSA has said that realignment will occur soon in all remaining seats where it is needed except for Finniss, Kavel, Hammond and Ngadjuri, all of which have exclusion order issues.

Light (ALP 20.1%) 

I'm sorry, is this actually a seat?  Gawler-centred Light north-east of Adelaide was a former conservative seat held by Labor's Tony Piccolo for twenty years, but Piccolo has decamped to Ngadjuri which he currently seems to be losing; this must have seemed like a good idea to someone at the time.  Piccolo's margin was such that the seat had become unloseable to the Liberals, but One Nation has turned out to be a very different story.  Alongside slightly disappointing performances in Liberal strongholds, One Nation have done very well in several Labor safe seats to the point that this one still requires a look at.

With 63.9% of enrolment counted (in 2022 it reached 88.1%), Light has Labor's James Agness on 37.8% leading One Nation's Alexander Banks on a very handy 34.3%.  The Liberals have 12.5%, the Greens 8.8%, Family First 3.1%, Legalise Cannabis 2.5% and Australian Family 0.9%.  As ECSA picked Labor and Liberal as the candidates to throw the 2CP for information for this seat in, we have no 2CP between Labor and One Nation and we will have to wait for the realignment of the count early in the week. 

We do however have ALP vs ON flows in Giles and Wright.  In Giles, Labor is getting 55.8% of all preferences and in Wright 62.7%.  Light lies between these two in terms of the Green vote, but Giles and Wright have incumbents with far higher Labor primaries, just below 50%, and the Labor primary would be corellated with the preference flow to Labor.  On current numbers, Agness needs only 43.9% of preferences to win, and if what Giles and Wright are pointing to about a perhaps weak flow from Liberals to One Nation is true,  that should be quite easily doable.  Poll Bludger projects Labor with only a very narrow 50.3-49.7 final margin though and this is one worth keeping an eye on as the realignment unfolds to see where it settles.  There is also quite a lot of outstanding post-counting in this seat and if time permits I will have a look at what that 24% or so may be and how it may behave.  

Monday 23rd 11:10 pm: While the realignment of Light has not yet commenced, one that has reached a fairly advanced stage is King.  In the King day booth votes Labor is on 43.8% to One Nation's 30.2% (cf Light 37.7% vs 34.3%) and the Green vote slightly trails the Liberals (10.2-11.0 cf Light 8.8-12.4).  One would expect the flow in King to be slightly stronger than in Light, but not hugely.  The overall flow in the King day booths is 57% to Labor.  With Labor a few points ahead in Light I would now be quite surprised if they did not retain it.  

Tuesday 24th: Five booths have been realigned and the flow for Labor is fine (at work so haven't done detailed calculations) so I now expect this seat will be retained.

Wednesday 25th 9:30: The realignment did end up a fair bit closer than expected so there is still a bit of juice left in the seat though 51.6-48.4 is a large bridge to close.

MacKillop (Liberal defection 22.6%)

Monday 23rd: MacKillop is the seat of Nick McBride who quit the Liberal Party in 2023.  In 2025 he was charged with domestic violence offences to which charges he maintains innocence.  This resulted in him campaigning in an ankle bracelet and he's clearly lost his seat.  One Nation's Jason Virgo, a former Sex Party candidate and marriage equality campaigner (now in the same party as Cory Bernardi, WTF?) leads on 35.5% from the Liberals Rebekah Rosser 22.9%, Labor's Mark Braes 15.6%, McBride 15.1%, Greens 3.4 Nationals 3.2 Legalise Cannabis 2.2 Aus Family 1.4 Steven Davies (IND) 0.7.  McBride issued an open how to vote card.  Rosser's victory target is currently 65%.  Tim Whetstone is getting 71% of preferences against One Nation in Chaffey but Whetstone is an incumbent and drawing from a preference pool that is almost all Labor and Greens.  One would expect these parties' preferences will break less strongly to Rosser and also that McBride's will break weakly - though there might be some Liberal loyalty in the mix.  Rosser might benefit from the Nationals' preferences and with only 69.7% of enrolment counted I think there is enough doubt about the outcome to downgrade this from assumed win status until we get the realignment.

In Flinders Sam Telfer is getting 67% of preferences after six booths but these are strong booths for One Nation so this may rise to 70%.  

Wed 25th 11am: The first booth realigned is Naracoorte prepolls which is a strong booth for McBride and a poor one for Labor and to a lesser degree Virgo. Here Rosser gets 62% of preferences, a little shy of the required rate 

1:30 I'm at work for a few hours and may not have spreadsheet access but so far Rosser has 62.3% and 63.4% in the two big prepolls but has got a 70.8% flow in the Penola booth. So this can at least be close and need to see where the realignment finishes up.

Wednesday 25th 6:20:  Two large prepolls and four small booths have been realigned.  To this point Rosser is getting 63.9% of preferences.  I project this to stay about the same but without much confidence because of the small number of booths and variation between them.  In any case that's projecting incredibly close (Virgo might be up by about 200 if this projection holds) and this one looks like it will go to declaration votes.  

7:10 Another three booths in including my new favourite booth name Nangwarry and Rosser is getting 63.4%.  My projection says this could go up slightly, but it does undervalue the size of the prepoll booths so we will see!

Thursday 24th 12:40 Many more booths in and Virgo has 63% of preferences, my projection still thinks this might rise.  On the present preference share Virgo finishes the realignment on 50.95 prior to postals etc but it could come in a bit lower than that.  Rosser is still competitive here.

5:50 Realignment finished and for now Virgo leads 51.17-48.83.  That seems very tough to pull back.

Monday 30th: I don't know why figures haven't been updating in this seat but based on counting that hasn't been posted, the Liberals have conceded.

Morphett (Liberal 4.5%)

Sun 22nd 6 pm: I thought the prepolls would probably put this one away but I resisted calling it in case they didn't and suddenly Morphett has sprung into life!  In this Western Adelaide seat two-term Liberal incumbent Stephen Patterson has picked up on prepolls and now leads on 2PP by a whopping eight votes.  It's a seat where One Nation are outpolling the Greens by just enough for their weaker preference flow to cancel them out.  I will have a detailed look at this one in coming days.  

8:45 As for past patterns, it turns out that in 2022 all postcount votes were lumped simply as "declaration votes" so I am flying blind about how the remaining votes compare to 2022.  But from this point with no postals yet counted I would generally expect a Liberal candidate to improve.

Monday 23rd: While we wait for some more serious action, rechecking has cut Patterson's lead to two votes.

Wednesday 25th: And now Toby Priest has the lead back (presumably off rechecking), a whopping 34 votes ahead despite adverse postals.

Thursday 26th: A more serious lead for Priest now, currently 167 ahead.  This is off polling day absents, which are counted in the ordinaries section and broke 57-43 to Labor. 

6:30 And the first batch of postals in this seat were relatively harmless breaking only 512-454 so I think there is now a very high chance Labor gains Morphett and am treating it as an expected win.  

Narungga (IND 8.3% vs Lib)

Monday 23rd: Narungga is the seat of former Liberal Fraser Ellis, who after being re-elected while under a cloud in 2022 was found guilty of four out of a pile of charges of expenses rorting. He is appealing so no conviction has yet been recorded but the voters may well have realised that if they voted for him they could be back at the polls real soon.  One Nation's Chantelle Thomas leads with 38.6% from the Liberals' Tania Stock 22.2%, Ellis 17.5%, Esther Short (ALP) 14.8%, Greens 2.6%, Legalise Cannabis 1.8%, Family First 1.3%, Aus Family 0.6%, Real Change 0.4%, United Voice 0.2%.   Labor have put Ellis last on their how to vote card so he presumably won't overtake Stock in a three-way throw.  Ellis has recommended preferences to Stock.  Stock needs 71% of preferences to win.  This is the same as Tim Whetstone is getting in Chaffey but Whetstone is an incumbent drawing mostly from Labor and Greens preferences.  It is hard to see why Stock would get the same flow from Ellis and Labor voters.  Although Ellis also recommended preferences to Stock, independent how to vote cards are little followed compared to major party cards.  A realignment to One Nation vs Liberals will clarify the picture.  

Tuesday 24th:  Minor changes - Thomas 38.5% Stock 21.9% Ellis 17.6% Short 15.0%.  There are a few possible exclusion order issues here, for instance Short might overtake Ellis, but Short can't win anyway.

7:00: We are now getting a new 2CP throw.  At present Stock leads the counted booths 52.2-47.8 but the booths are unrepresentatively good for the Liberals.  Stock is getting 67.4% of preferences which is not enough to win across the whole seat (it projects to trailing 48.5-51.5) but more than that, I would expect this share to drop to around 64.7% (which would be 47.4-52.6).

Wednesday 25th 1:30 Well actually the Liberal share has picked up to 69%! They trail 49.4-50.6 (232 votes) with three very small booths to realign. This will go down to declaration votes.

6:30 All the booths are realigned and the count has also now included 969 postals which split 512-457 to Stock.  Thomas leads with 50.43% 2CP (173 votes) - there is a lot we don't know about what the remaining declaration votes might do here!  It's worth noting that because this is Liberal vs One Nation the usual early postals/late postals dynamic doesn't work so well here, in fact Labor votes are favourable for Stock.  I estimate 2300 postals remaining.  

Thursday 6:00 Another drop of postals which broke to Stock but not that strongly (598-572) and Thomas leads by 147.  Absents will be interesting.  

Friday 27th 6:15 Stock has gained massively on something called "Electoral Visitor/ Mobile polling declaration votes" and is now only 46 behind.  Absents very slightly favoured Thomas but this is now insanely close and could get closer and is probably headed for a recount.  SA does not have an automatic recount threshhold but recounts can be requested.  

Sunday 29th 9:15 Gap now showing on ABC as just 26 votes.  

Monday 30th With the gap now at 61 votes it appears there is little if anything left to count and the question will turn to a possible recount but 61 votes is a good deal more comfortable against late shocks than 25 (which it got down to yesterday.)

Wednesday 1st:Thomas said on Facebook yesterday that she had provisionally won by 71 with a "full recount" today.

Thursday 2nd: Thomas wins by 58 after recount.