South Australia Postcount 2026: Kavel

KAVEL (Retiring IND vs Lib 25.4, notional Liberal vs ALP 3.5)

Matt Schultz (IND) vs David Leach (ALP) vs Christiaan Loch (ON) vs Bradley Orr (Lib) - perhaps more likely between the first two

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Sunday 22nd 11:50am: I really wanted to wait til the prepolls were in before unrolling postcount threads for the messy seats, because prepolls often put scenarios to bed.  But as it's taking a while to get there on Sunday, I will start the Kavel thread before that point (and probably the Finniss one too) and if things do later simplify then this is at least a time capsule of how insane this seat looked.  

The problem with the Mt Barker / Adelaide Hills seat is simple; nobody has any votes.  The succession war for the former conservative Liberal turned indie/Speaker/Minister Dan Cregan has produced a splatter of primaries with nobody with even a quarter of the vote (I'm wondering if this is some kind of record for a mainland state seat if it persists).  With just 39.5% of enrolment counted, Labor's David Leach leads on 23.9%, Cregan's nominal successor Matt Schultz has 20.7%, Christiaan Loch of One Nation has 19.7% and the Liberals' Bradley Orr has 17.3%.  The Greens have 12.8% and the detritus (ballot clutter makes good snail food) is Family First 1.7% Animal Justice 1.6% Real Change 1.1% Australian Family 0.5% Jacob van Raalte (IND) 0.5% and Fair Go 0.2%.  

On the day booths, Schultz has an overwhelming 58.9-41.1 2CP lead over Leach, so if he makes the 2CP vs Leach he wins, and I am sure he also wins if he makes it there vs the conservatives (at the moment it doesn't look like Labor can miss the final two but it's early days).  The question is does he make it or not, and if he does not, who might win?

Here it is worth noting that the Greens how to vote card has Leach 4 and Schultz 5.  Only about 15% of Greens voters will actually follow the card, but that plus the tendency of many Greens voters to preference Labor whatever the card says is going to make it hard for Schultz to get a large lead over the chasing conservatives.  The current risk to Schultz is that after one of Orr or Loch is eliminated in fourth, preferences will flow strongly enough between those two that Schultz misses the 2CP (we've seen this movie before with an indie who would have otherwise won, Rockhampton 2017).  If that occurs Poll Bludger projects the seat to Labor with 53.5% 2CP off a seemingly reasonable estimate that Labor will get about 54% of the Schultz exclusion against One Nation.  (And presumably not much different if Orr is the final opponent).

Depending on what happens with the prepolls it may be reasonably clear that Orr is still fourth, in which case a 3CP count would potentially greatly clarify the way forward, or it may be not so clear if Orr comes up on prepolls.  

It may be that the prepolls will blow the above scenarios away, but we will see!