The South Australian state election (19th of March) was expected to take days to produce a result. The ABC’s Election Analyst Antony Green called it in a mere two hours. Steven Marshall conceded by 9 pm. Labor had won by a landslide. Election analysts spent the weeks leading up to the state election predicting a lengthy count. A record number of South Australians voted in advance via post, primarily due to the pandemic. Postal votes can be sent right up till election day, so many are not received until the next week. Even those received were not set to be counted until the Monday following the election. Labor was expected to win based on opinion-polling (surveys conducted to determine voter intent) but still faced the possibility of a hung parliament. A hung parliament occurs when the party forming government does not have a clear majority. It normally involves a lot of compromise with independents.
So why was it called so quickly? Politics is unpredictable! There’s not a clear answer either. Labor turned over far more seats than predicted. Seven seats on the Legislative Assembly (the Lower House of state parliament) were gained by Labor. In comparison, the Liberal Party did not win any new seats, only retaining seats previously held. Even safe Liberal seats (seats that are traditionally guaranteed wins for a party) became marginal, with huge swings to the Labor Party. It was an election won on health policy. Six months ago, Marshall and the SA Liberals were practically guaranteed a second term in government. The Omicron variant, reopening of the South Australian border, and ramping crisis changed that. The SA Liberal’s popularity went down as cases arose and the highly effective protesting undertaken by paramedics shed new light on the Marshall government’s failure to improve ramping. The new premier, Peter Malinauskas, ran a campaign based on fixing ramping.
Words by Louise Jackson
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The SA State Election at a Glance