It had not been my intention to write today’s article. I say that because back on Monday 20 September last year I had published in Switzer Daily an article titled 'Will Steven Marshall win the South Australian state election?'. The last sentence of the first paragraph reads: “My article today deals with the South Australian state election which is much easier to predict. Labor has only a 20% chance.” Until very recently my thinking was to leave it at that.
Contrary to my expectation that turned out to be a controversial article. My speculation is that the controversy it created was the result of me laying my cards too much on the table. I do think Marshall deserves a second term which leads me to expect it. Historically, the only elected state premiers not getting a second term for their party are the bad ones, or the ones who turn out to be hopelessly inadequate in their performance in the office of premier. Marshall is not like that. Therefore, he deserves a second term and will get one. That has been my logic.
My problem is that I am not a South Australian – but I do read the polls which suggest that a majority of voters plan to deny Marshall the second term I think he deserves. For that reason, I replace the sentence “Labor has only a 20% chance” with this one: “Labor has a 45% chance.”
In The Weekend Australian last Saturday there was a Newspoll with the attached article by David Penberthy, the paper’s South Australian correspondent, titled 'Marshall in danger of one-and-done'. The poll (taken from 18 to 24 February had the two-party preferred vote as 53% for Labor and 47% for Liberal, a 5% swing to Labor). Asked who would be the better premier, 39% nominated Marshall and 46% the Labor leader, Peter Malinauskas.
When I get statistics like that my first reaction is to go to my pendulum. Assuming (as is almost always the case) that the deviations from uniformity cancel out the result on Newspoll figures would be that Labor would keep the 19 seats it won in February 2018, gain the seat of Florey from the independent Frances Bedford, and gain four seats from the Liberal Party. So, Labor would have 24 seats and the combination of all the others would be 23. Malinauskas would be premier.
There is a reasonable chance that will happen. I still think, however, Marshall is more likely to stay premier. To understand my thinking, it is best to go through the critical seats, beginning with the fact that my pendulum shows there being 26 notional seats for the Liberal Party, the 25 it won in 2018 plus rural Frome, currently held by the pro-Labor independent Geoff Brock but a blue-ribbon Liberal seat on its new boundaries. It includes Burra, Eudunda, Jamestown, Kapunda, Roseworthy, Spalding and Two Wells.
In my analysis below I use the word “buffer” as short for the percentage swing required to lose. My reasoning is explained in my article of Wednesday 23 February 'Celebrating fifty years of the Mackerras Pendulum'. There are only four genuinely marginal Liberal seats. I name them now with their buffer in each case. They are Newland (0.2%), King (0.8%), Adelaide (an even one per cent) and Elder (2.1`%).
My prediction is that Labor will win two of them, together with the 19 seats it won in 2018 plus the seat of Florey gained from the independent member Frances Bedford. The Liberals will keep the other two. That would mean Labor has 22 seats, but the Liberal Party has 23. In such a scenario there would be two seats held by independents, Kavel and Mount Gambier. Since both are strongly Liberal against Labor in their two-party preferred vote, they would keep Marshall in office in a minority government.
Troy Bell is the independent Liberal in Mount Gambier, elected as an independent. Dan Cregan in Kavel was elected as a Liberal but is contesting his seat as an independent having been dis-endorsed by the Liberal Party. He is the Speaker of the House of Assembly, having gained the job in October 2021 in a deal with Labor and the crossbench members. There are two other dis-endorsed former Liberals seeking to retain their seats as independents. They hope their status as sitting members will help them, but I am sceptical of their chances. I predict Narungga will be won by the Liberal candidate, Tom Michael, and Waite will also be won by the Liberal candidate, Alexander Hide. Both are traditional blue-ribbon Liberal seats, Narungga being based on the Yorke Peninsula and Waite including several posh Adelaide suburbs.
Of the four marginal Liberal seats, my prediction is that King and Newland will go to Labor but Adelaide and Elder will stay Liberal. In the cases of King and Newland, my belief is that the issue of the Marshall government’s decision to axe the annual V8 Supercars street race in Adelaide will help Labor in that part of Adelaide, the northern suburbs. There is, however, another factor. There is a revived Christian Party, Family First, which is recommending preferences to Labor in both seats. Family First was revived last year by former SA Labor treasurer Jack Snelling and industry minister Tom Kenyon, both devout Catholics. For that extra reason, I predict Labor’s Olivia Savvas will win Newland and Rhiannon Pearce will win King.
For a variety of reasons, I lack the space to elaborate I think the Liberal Party has a big enough buffer in both Adelaide and Elder to hold both seats. In the case of Adelaide, my view is that the sitting Liberal (since 2010), Rachel Sanderson, is diligent and likeable and, therefore, more likely to hold the seat than lose it. Also, with six candidates she was lucky enough to draw the top position on the ballot paper! She is the minister for child protection in the Marshall government.
The case of Carolyn Power in Elder is interesting. Because she voted against abortion law reform, she will get the benefit of Family First’s “how to vote” advice. The sitting Liberals in King and Newland, by contrast, voted in favour of the new abortion laws, thus arousing the ire of the many Fundamentalist and Pentecostalist churches that are strong in Adelaide’s north.
In a House of Assembly of 47 members, the magic number is 24 seats. In my opinion, the Liberal Party is more likely to win such a number than Labor.