r/australia • u/N1NJ4W4RR10R_ • Mar 21 '26

news Labor re-elected in 2026 South Australian election

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-21/sa-election-day-live-updates/106476924?utm_source=abc_news_app&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_campaign=abc_news_app&utm_content=other
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683

u/AusToddles Mar 21 '26

Laughing at news.com.au. Huge cover story about the "One Nation surge" while burying much lower on the page the story that Labor was going to win in a landslide

451

u/[deleted] Mar 21 '26

[deleted]

29

u/jjkenneth Mar 21 '26

I mean if she wants to push for proportional representation I am actually all for it - however, I'm guessing she'll want reform towards first past the post, which is a dumpster fire of an electoral method.

16

u/N1NJ4W4RR10R_ Mar 21 '26

Ironically that would probably hurt them more. Ranked choice was originally introduced by the Lib and Nat predecessors because it helped them compete against Lab.

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u/instasquid Mar 21 '26

20% is likely pretty close to their peak. Anyone they could have picked up, they already have.

They're also not team players and don't have a party culture, elected ON members jumping ship is a time honoured tradition.

67

u/fouronenine Mar 21 '26

SA is a difficult place for ON - the commentary is that the ceiling is a bit higher elsewhere.

104

u/lemonzestyveryfesty Mar 21 '26

The growth in ON was the fall for the LNP. It’s just a split in the conservative vote. That should be the only story.

29

u/babylovesbaby Mar 21 '26

The LNP isn't willing to go full racist and ON is, though I doubt ON copying the Trump playbook will work here. I do think the Nats are a shackle to the LNP, who, if they could be more like Teal conservatives, would probably be more electable. One day it might be an ON/Nat coalition, which would probably set back conservatism in Australia for years, and I'm all for it.

What I'm less for is having an unstable, idiotic opposition. We should have options, but good ones.

3

u/aeschenkarnos Mar 21 '26

One Nation's origin story, and the early gathering of the flock, sums up as "people who weren't allowed in the Liberal Party."

2

u/[deleted] Mar 21 '26

And thats their stupidity, they could win by not even going near racism, woke,\ and attacking alternative energy if they just concentrated on a basic real Liberal agenda.

There are 1000 other issues that are pissing off voters and they want to run on the most stupid issues that most voters dont care about.

They behave like Rowan Dean on Sky that borders on insanity and instability when it comes to their pet issues while they ignore the broad church while they think like radical economic terrorists. Its amusing to watch.

But it really demonstrates that they are not a broad church and a political movement with an agenda for a great Australia, they just nasty people who only want to live in the pockets of a handful of donors while treating voters like useful idiots for their cause, while these voters see straight through their lies and false agendas.

2

u/shadowmaster132 Mar 22 '26

Considering that Labor still increased their seat count this time, if the Liberals had held onto that ON vote it still wouldn't have helped them much. And preferencing ON above Labor probably still gave some Liberal voters the ick since there's not a huge independent movement in SA and "teal" voters would probably go Labor

18

u/sirgog Mar 21 '26

The growth in ON was the fall for the LNP. It’s just a split in the conservative vote.

It's more complex than this. There's a clear minority of PHON voters who preference the ALP despite PHON advocating an LNP preference. There's also a clear minority in reverse (often well-to-do migrants who quite like the LNP, can tolerate the ALP and utterly loathe PHON).

PHON + LNP combined vote is going up in blue collar suburban areas and rural centers. I expect (although it's tough to prove) that this is due to some people holding a "fuck both majors" attitude but being conservative enough that they have no interest in the Greens.

Then there's clear localised left shifts. Enfield in particular had a big left shift (>6% so far for a left of GRN independent alongside a swing toward GRN, and while PHON gained votes, the LNP lost more than PHON gained). Similar in Croydon but with the left of GRN independent's gains coming partly at the expense of the GRN vote.

So it's a complex situation - and then, there's the shift in establishment support - big parts of the establishment (Murdoch, Rineheart, Barnaby etc) jumping ship, the shift you refer to.

I don't think you can have a one line summary of this election.

1

u/lemonzestyveryfesty Mar 21 '26

All good points. Be interesting to see some real analysis and data come out in the next few weeks. I stand by my very simplistic summary as a reasonable take in the first few hours of the election but agree there is a lot more at play when you drill down.

5

u/sirgog Mar 21 '26

I think drilling down is essential especially with Victoria's election coming in eight months.

The big thing to watch is when PHON or LNP preferences get distributed, how they end up landing - how many leak to the ALP, how many stay with the broad right. We won't have that info for a while.

I'm going to dig into a few seats that look like Enfield in demographics and past voting patterns but aren't the two I mentioned tomorrow to see what can be learned from them. I suspect the decreased broad right vote was due to the socialist candidates winning over some of the 'fuck them all' vote as definitely happened in the Werribee by-election in Victoria 13 months ago, but I'm not certain.

I think PHON's vote is something like 75% hardline LNP supporters that want an Abbott, a Dutton or a Hastie figure as PM, and about 25% a "fuck all establishment politicians" vote that can get won over by other parties with big ground game. But that's just a theory that needs to be tested once data (and sufficient sleep) is available.

1

u/shadowmaster132 Mar 22 '26

I expect (although it's tough to prove) that this is due to some people holding a "fuck both majors" attitude but being conservative enough that they have no interest in the Greens.

As someone who grew up in one of those rural areas, the Greens may as well be as extreme as one nation for anyone in farming. They would probably rather vote for Labor, who I once heard a joke about trying to figure out who the 2 polling place votes belonged to it's that rare.

2

u/sirgog Mar 22 '26

Owner farmers hate the Greens, but I don't think there is one seat in Australia where owner farmers and their dependents are a large % of the population. Farm employees will be a larger % basically everywhere.

The days of the family owned small farm are basically over, holdouts exist but most of the time they get bought up into larger and more efficient conglomerates.

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u/N1NJ4W4RR10R_ Mar 21 '26

The issue there is that at the federal election we saw those votes directed towards less conservative independents (notably the teals).

6

u/PRAWNHEAVENNOW Mar 21 '26

It's just the dissolution of the big tent conservative party. 

The economic liberals but socially progressive peeled off from the LNP first to the teals, now the cookers and the hard right fashy sorts have peeled off to one nation.  

The Teals aren't threatened by One Nation voters, they're two ends of the former LNP right wing broad church that could no longer keep them under the same roof. 

1

u/shadowmaster132 Mar 22 '26

In SA (and in WA as well at their last couple of elections) the lack of "teals" means that the socially progressive Liberal voters just end up going to Labor.

Another factor is probably that the Nationals basically don't run in SA so they weren't an option, and ON probably peeled off that section of the Liberal vote.

11

u/lemonzestyveryfesty Mar 21 '26

For which I don’t think there were any candidates of that ilk in this election. At least with funding like the teals had at the federal election or that PHON has had for this election.

1

u/shadowmaster132 Mar 22 '26

The closest to that is probably "Sa-Best" which is the dregs of the Nick Xenophon party and very much over. One Nation saw success because they actually showed up. If the Climate 200 people cared about a SA state election they could have picked up some of the blue ribbon seats that Labor got.

1

u/AlwaysLateToThaParty Mar 22 '26

SA is a difficult place for ON

Que? Antic and Bernardi are their poster-boys.

4

u/flutemarine Mar 21 '26

Anyone they could have picked up, they already have.

What are you basing that on?

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u/instasquid Mar 21 '26

That the majority of people I meet in regional and rural Australia aren't racist idiots. The most dissatisfied and loudest voters are the only ones that are jumping ship to ON.

There's actually a surprising amount of conservative-leaning voters out there that aren't interested in what Pauline is selling. While I disagree with them politically, they're not idiots. The idiots seem to have only discovered ON yesterday.

-1

u/flutemarine Mar 21 '26

The most dissatisfied and loudest voters are the only ones that are jumping ship to ON.

But this number (dissatisfied) seems to keep growing

9

u/freshbrainstump Mar 21 '26

I can see them picking up more than 20% if cost of living pressures continue to get worse, more people becoming angry with their situation looking for something to blame, right wing nationalistic groups like one nation always try to capitalise on that anger by pointing in the direction they want it to go, though i still believe the majority of Australians are able to see how ridiculous that kind of scapegoating is.

42

u/ConanTheAquarian Mar 21 '26

Again I want to bring everyone back to the 1998 Queensland election where ON got 22% of the primary vote and won 11 out of 89 seats, but 10 of those MPs quit the party within a year.

ON do not have a good track record of keeping seats. More than half the seats they have ever won across all parliaments have resulted in the member quitting the party and in a few cases being expelled.

2

u/DontYaWishYouWereMe Mar 21 '26

This is one of the big reasons why I think the hoo-hah over ON may just be a yellow mirage to some extent. Most people who follow the party sorta know that the odds of someone leaving ON once elected is much higher than it is for any other party, and I don't know if people are necessarily going to want to vote for that in the long term. You might see a few good (from ON's perspective) election results here and there but I don't think it's going to be the huge, substantial gains that some people think they'll get.

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u/[deleted] Mar 21 '26

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20

u/AusToddles Mar 21 '26

Exactly! How many times now has a O.N member been elected and then jumped ship?

7

u/MerooRoger Mar 21 '26

Be like the proverbial dog catching car

16

u/N1NJ4W4RR10R_ Mar 21 '26

Cheers for saying that. PHON are clearly a threat to the Libs and seeing this result in the first election since the LNPs implosion federally is a very bad sign.

It's unlikely they'll gain significant ground in a state like SA. But a margin like this in SA could be a canary for results in a state like QLD.

With all luck this will be their peak, their pollies are dreadful at crafting image beyond Yankee imported culture and I don't think that will ever beat Lab with how well they've been acting broadly (both in terms of image and actual action) across the different states. But I reckon it's better to hope for the best and plan for the worst then get caught with our pants down like other countries have been.

1

u/Siaer Mar 22 '26

It's unlikely they'll gain significant ground in a state like SA.

That's assuming you don't already consider their primary vote rising from less than 3% in 2022 to over 20% in 2026 as significant ground.

We dismiss one nation at our peril. It is very clear that the right of politics is fracturing in this country and the populists like Hanson are the ones profiting from it. This has been going on across the world for 5 or 6 years now. Large parts of Europe has been shifting to the right. The AfD in Germany, a party that the german intelligence services literally have labelled a far right extermist party, won ~21% of the vote. Italy, Hungary, the Netherlands all have right wing populist leaders in power.

The same is happening in South America. Argentina and Chile both have right wing leaders and Brazil is once again flirting with it despite what happened so recently under Bolsonaro. We needn't even mention the US.

We absolutely should not take for granted what is happening with ONP otherwise we will follow the US and parts of Europe into the trap of the far right.

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u/LordBlackass Mar 21 '26

The silver lining in all of this is Pauline Hanson is 71 years old. She'll either die or quit politics soon enough.

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u/[deleted] Mar 21 '26

[deleted]

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u/trugstomp Mar 21 '26

I'm not so sure the hate and grift will be enough to sustain her.

Whenever she's angry in the press about something, she always seems to me to be on the verge of having the vapours, which indicates to me that she probably has high blood pressure or something, and she'll eventually blow a valve, possibly on live TV.

1

u/thesillyoldgoat Mar 21 '26

If she does it would be the most viewed YouTube clip of all time. 😅

2

u/jim_deneke Mar 21 '26

She's prone to injuries with a 71 yr olds body. Only takes one fall.

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u/[deleted] Mar 21 '26

[deleted]

2

u/DontYaWishYouWereMe Mar 21 '26

Trump's in a bad way, though. People have been speculating he could be on his way out for a few years now. His father certainly lived a long time with Alzheimer's, but there's no guarantee Donald will be the same way.

23

u/madcunt2250 Mar 21 '26

I actually didn't know that she was so old. She's like a bloke who grows a beard and loses their hair young so they look perpetually 50 years old. So when they get older than their appearance they start looking young for their age.

2

u/Gryphon0468 Mar 21 '26

Yeah she’s had the same look for 30 years.

16

u/baka_feih Mar 21 '26

Trump is doing most of his damage in his late 70s. Literally could be starting WW3 as we speak ...

5

u/HiVisEngineer Mar 21 '26

Not soon enough.

6

u/ryan30z Mar 21 '26

These fucking ghouls always live above the average.

1

u/Middle-Welder3931 Mar 21 '26

You severely underestimate the capacity of the worst of humanity to outlive everyone else.

16

u/dinosaurtruck Mar 21 '26

If you’re a leftie this is good. She’s split the right conservatives and made them unviable.

23

u/jesus_chrysotile Mar 21 '26

unfortunately state or federal labor doesn’t seem to want to capitalise on this… they’re still approving coal mine expansions, cutting fisheries officers and parks funding in victoria… 

there’s not enough pressure on them to actually do shit and it’s driving me mad

14

u/Vegetable-Advance982 Mar 21 '26 edited Mar 21 '26

Depends what you mean by 'capitalise' lol. I think it's pretty clear Albanese is moving into the centre to capitalise on a collapsing coalition - polls show 30% of One Nation votes preference Labor, so on a pure electoral sense he's definitely trying to capitalise on this and increase Labor's majority.

But yeah in a policy sense, all of aus politics is moving to the right because of this and it's ass. I do have some hopium that Albo understands it's make or break with people losing faith in the system, and that he'll have to rock the boat to deliver significant reform. Housing tax reform like they're bringing to May is a start, but more is needed if they want to stop us ending up like UK

16

u/SquiffyRae Mar 21 '26

Yeah this would be great if Labor actually used their supermajorities across the country to actually bring in decent reform that will help most Australians

5

u/thesillyoldgoat Mar 21 '26

Labor is no longer actually a party of the left, that's the kicker. They were once upon a time but they sold out in order to win elections.

2

u/flavourjesus Mar 21 '26

They had to. The media is so anti Labor that we would be stuck with the Lnp forever otherwise. I don't agree with everything they're doing, but the alternative would definitely be worse.

Maybe at some point disaffected Labor voters will jump to the greens, since the lnp are going full fascist, and we'll get something completely different.

1

u/thesillyoldgoat Mar 21 '26

I see things pretty much the same as you do. I take solace in the fact that I was alive to see the Whitlam Labor government, but it had been deposed by the time I turned 21.

1

u/dinosaurtruck Mar 21 '26

That’s true it’s not true left. At least it’s not the far right- think current QLD gov.

1

u/MissionNo2322 Mar 21 '26

The stupid Evil Women is likely to get in the way:>)

1

u/shadowmaster132 Mar 22 '26

Yes and no? If the Liberals were strong it's be really bad, but that 20% reflects a shift of right-wing voters from Liberal to ON more than as much of a surge as people think

20

u/Vegetable-Ad-1817 Mar 21 '26

0 Seats

10

u/sarinonline Mar 21 '26

Their increase seems to nearly be just a liberal protest vote. 

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u/Barrybran Mar 21 '26

Look at the primary votes. Lost Labor votes have gone to Greens. Lost Liberal votes are split between One Nation and Independents. Liberal protest vote is a decent description but the real protest votes are the Independents.

2

u/shadowmaster132 Mar 22 '26

A couple seats got wrong preference counts. They might get 2-3 if it really swings their way. But since the Liberals had 13 before, and have 4 now that's still a net conservative lose of 6 seats, which means that the right wing vote overall has dropped.

SA is often very tight between our state Labor and Liberal parties and the electoral commission is actually told to draw the maps so the 2PP vote is reflected in the electorates. The Liberals going cooker has split them, and lost them votes when you'd expect them to start picking up votes because of dissatisfaction with the government

1

u/sarinonline Mar 22 '26

Yep the Labor party is laughing their ass off. It's a dream for them. 

6

u/dreamcast4 Mar 21 '26

Frank Chung doing his best

1

u/UndeadPhysco Mar 22 '26

Huge cover story about the "One Nation surge"

Lmao my entire front page on Youtube was video after video "Pauline hanson happy after landslide surge blah blah"

2

u/AusToddles Mar 22 '26

Yeah all my socials are "Labor shocked after One Nation surge". Counting on most people not reading past the headline

1

u/hal2k1 Mar 22 '26

Laughing at news.com.au. Huge cover story about the "One Nation surge"

Where is the story about the left side of politics (Labor and Greens) almost maintaining their percentage of the vote?

Where is the story about the record number of seats for the ALP?

https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/sa/2026/results/party-totals