South Australian state election - 17th March 2018

[AustralianSwingVoter]

The numbers at the end of the night:

House of Assembly

Liberal	24	(+2)	(+5)	(-2)	(+1)
Labor	18	(-5)	(-5)	(-1)	(-1)
Independents	3	(+1)	(-2)	(+1)	(-2)
Seats in doubt	2	(+2)	(+2)	(+2)	(+2)

note- brackets on left indicate change from last election, brackets in centre left indicate change from close of parliament, brackets on centre right indicate change from notionals of last election, brackets on right indicate change from notionals taking into account by-elections and defections.




Legislative Council

Liberal	8	(±)
Labor	7	(-1)
SA Best	2	(+2)
Greens	2	(±)
Conservatives	1	(-1)
Advance SA	1	(±)
Dignity	0	(-1)
Seats in doubt	1	(+1)

[AustralianSwingVoter]

Can't say this for sure until they release a TPP number (which SA are constitutionally bound to do) but there's actually a pretty good chance that the overall TPP swing is towards Labor - I'm basing this on a cursory look at the swings that are available at the moment so I could be wrong.  Even considering that the fact that the Liberals have won is hardly a surprise: the redistribution because of the Fairness Clause screwed over the ALP and while they've managed to overcome it the last few elections there naturally comes a point where you've reached your max in certain communities and that may well be what has happened.  Its actually a reverse of the last few elections where there were big swings towards the Liberals but Labor were able to hold onto (well "notionally gain" would probably be more accurate) to places that had been redistributed in the Liberals favour while in this election things are a bit all over the place because of Xenophon but broadly Labor have at worst held up and at best moved forward slightly but they've not been able to gain more support in those redistributed seats hence why they've lost government.  Its not good for them - losing never is good - but its hardly a disaster and the Xenophon thing was a much bigger disaster.

This might be duplicating someone else in the thread but I tried reading it all and then realised that its the same person posting over and over and over again basically filibustering the conversation and that's never interesting to read.

Labor will gain on TPP, but let's be realistic here, they won in 2014 on a TPP of just 47%. 53% TPP would usually be a near-landslide for a party.

[IceAgeComing]

I mean that's obvious but its just interesting that an incumbent government has been defeated despite likely having a swing towards them: I can't think of any historical example of this from any country that uses an electoral system with Single Member seats.  There are reasons for this as explained in my post but, well, even then its one of those odd things that should be noted as a potential first.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

I mean that's obvious but its just interesting that an incumbent government has been defeated despite likely having a swing towards them: I can't think of any historical example of this from any country that uses an electoral system with Single Member seats.  There are reasons for this as explained in my post but, well, even then its one of those odd things that should be noted as a potential first.

I can't think of specific examples off the top of my head, however I'm certain it's happened a few times in Australia. At minimum there are countless examples of parties gaining net seats despite suffering a swing against them.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

Someone messed up in Adelaide, and after being corrected Labor now has 50.4% of the vote here. Despite that, the Liberals are notoriously strong on Declaration Votes in Adelaide, and when they're counted tomorrow they'll easily put the Liberals back in the lead.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

Per Antony:
The rolls for Adelaide, Heysen, Mawson and Newland have been scanned today, allowing Dec votes to be counted tomorrow. This allows any duplicate vote to be dealt with in the declaration vote count.

So tomorrow we'll be getting just about the final figures in Adelaide, Heysen, Mawson and Newland, the four closest seats in the state.
In Adelaide the declaration votes will easily put incumbent Liberal Rachel Sanderson back in the lead.
In Heysen the declaration votes probably won't change the margin, however they will eliminate SA Best's only chance of a comeback here.
Mawson is the only seat to watch tomorrow, as the declaration votes will substantially favour the Liberals, however it's on the tipping point of whether or not it will put the Liberal's over the line.
In Newland the declaration votes will increase the Liberal margin slightly, however Labor's chance has already gone here.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

On SA Best, a good article from Ben Raue at The Tally Room with some great graphs and maps:
http://www.tallyroom.com.au/33110

[AustralianSwingVoter]

The only two remaining seats in doubt are Adelaide and Mawson. Adelaide's small Labor lead will evaporate tomorrow, and the seat will be called for the Liberals, taking them to 25. In Mawson, however, it's truly line-ball and probably won't be called tomorrow, but rather when the result is certified.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

Per Antony:
The rolls for Adelaide, Heysen, Mawson and Newland have been scanned today, allowing Dec votes to be counted tomorrow. This allows any duplicate vote to be dealt with in the declaration vote count.

So tomorrow we'll be getting just about the final figures in Adelaide, Heysen, Mawson and Newland, the four closest seats in the state.
In Adelaide the declaration votes will easily put incumbent Liberal Rachel Sanderson back in the lead.
In Heysen the declaration votes probably won't change the margin, however they will eliminate SA Best's only chance of a comeback here.
Mawson is the only seat to watch tomorrow, as the declaration votes will substantially favour the Liberals, however it's on the tipping point of whether or not it will put the Liberal's over the line.
In Newland the declaration votes will increase the Liberal margin slightly, however Labor's chance has already gone here.

I don't know what the ECSA was talking about as we only have new numbers in from Heysen at current.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

ECSA have dumped the four marginals, and they only change is that the Liberals have, as expected, taken the lead with 51.5%, so they're now on 25 seats. Leon Bignell's lead in Mawson has been cut down to 50.5%, and so it remains the only seat in play.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

Something important to add, of the 20 seats Labor is currently leading in 19 of them have a swing to Labor. Only in Taylor, which is complicated by SA Best, is Labor suffering a swing against it. That is why Labor is getting a swing towards it this election. This is a correction for the 2010 and 2014 elections, where Labor won on TPPs of only 48.4 and 47.0. In 2010 how this happened was in every safe Labor seat the swing to the Liberals was greater than the average swing of 8.4%, while in the 7 marginals which were designed to flip to the Libs on a 50.1% statewide margin in the two most marginal Labor saw the only two swings towards them, while of the other 5 the Liberals gained two on above average swings while Labor held three on below average swings. In total in seats with a Labor margin of 10% or more the Liberals got an average swing of 11.1%, there were no seats with a notional margin between 7% and 10%, while in the 7 marginal Labor seats there was an average swing to the Liberals of only 3.9% and in Liberal held seats there was an average swing of 8.5%.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

Oh and the postals from Heysen completely close the door for SA Best.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I guess this is really just a case of SA's fairness provision finally working as intended?

[AustralianSwingVoter]

I ran the legislative council numbers through my very own Group Voting Ticket calculator, so it's obviously not perfect given at the final count there's nigh on a quota of informal votes from tickets the Independents and those which didn't preference the majors. However even with that caveat my numbers showed, firstly on top of the 3 LIB, 3 LAB and 2 SA BEST seats guaranteed by the quota the Greens will easily reach quota, as they have 0.98 quotas combined with Animal Justice, who they'll get a very strong flow from. After the Green is elected and their surplus distributed Dignity and the Liberal Democrats go. Dignity goes first, and could go before Animal Justice if they're unlucky, and they're preferencing SA Best 2, so Xenophon should receive the bulk of their votes. Liberal Democrat votes will split between the Liberals and the Conservatives, probably favouring the Conservatives however they could quite possibly push the Liberals over quota, and with precious few going anywhere else. Then SA Best and the Conservatives will fight over exclusion, and Conservatives will probably come on top because despite Xenophon's ability at drawing preferences in from everywhere the Conservatives start on a higher base with no opportunity for below-the-line leakage. With SA Best gone that leaves either 3 parties fighting for two seats or 2 parties fighting for 3 seats and with the 4th Liberal either just below quota or already elected with his surplus distributed and with Labor probably at about .75 quotas there is simply no way the Conservatives can overcome and win a seat.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

I guess this is really just a case of SA's fairness provision finally working as intended?

Yep, after 3/4 the four Labor wins happening despite losing the two-party preferred the fairness provision has, finally, worked.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I guess this is really just a case of SA's fairness provision finally working as intended?

Yep, after 3/4 the four Labor wins happening despite losing the two-party preferred the fairness provision has, finally, worked.

How much of the two-party vote have the Liberals got this time around?

[AustralianSwingVoter]

I guess this is really just a case of SA's fairness provision finally working as intended?

Yep, after 3/4 the four Labor wins happening despite losing the two-party preferred the fairness provision has, finally, worked.

How much of the two-party vote have the Liberals got this time around?

Looks to be around 51.5, so a 1.5% swing to Labor

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I guess this is really just a case of SA's fairness provision finally working as intended?

Yep, after 3/4 the four Labor wins happening despite losing the two-party preferred the fairness provision has, finally, worked.

How much of the two-party vote have the Liberals got this time around?

Looks to be around 51.5, so a 1.5% swing to Labor

Ironic that Labor gains a favorable swing but loses seats, not to mention government.
But that's SA for you. Fairness provision, packed Liberal votes, Labor incumbents perpetually gaining votes between elections, sheer bad luck, rural independents. Everything seemed to be going against the SA Liberals till now. It was only time before Labor stopped defying gravity...

[AustralianSwingVoter]

The numbers at the end of the night:

House of Assembly

Liberal - 25
Labor - 18
Independents - 3
Seats in doubt - 1




Legislative Council

Liberal - 8 (±) Labor - 8 (±) SA Best - 2 (+2) Greens - 2 (±) Conservatives - 1 (-1)

[AustralianSwingVoter]

I guess this is really just a case of SA's fairness provision finally working as intended?

Yep, after 3/4 the four Labor wins happening despite losing the two-party preferred the fairness provision has, finally, worked.

How much of the two-party vote have the Liberals got this time around?

Looks to be around 51.5, so a 1.5% swing to Labor

Ironic that Labor gains a favorable swing but loses seats, not to mention government.
But that's SA for you. Fairness provision, packed Liberal votes, Labor incumbents perpetually gaining votes between elections, sheer bad luck, rural independents. Everything seemed to be going against the SA Liberals till now. It was only time before Labor stopped defying gravity...

What really happened was that ECSA got serious about fairness, after '02 and '10 they just tinkered with the boundaries to shift a couple of marginal Labor seats barely into marginal Liberal ones, while in '10 although they did do a bit of a shakeup Labor well and truly defied gravity, with the only two seats that swung towards them being they're two closest seats, as they got giant swings of over 10% against them in their safe seats.
However after '14 ECSA has completely redrawn the boundaries to make it actually fair, and compared to the notionals only one seat has flipped King where they had a margin of only 0.1, no sitting member and a neophyte as a candidate. With Mawson being a tossup. What happened was that Labor finally regained some of those votes in they're heartland they lost 8 years ago. Despite this Labor did go well, just think about it, a four-term government being only narrowly defeated. The only longer lived government was Queensland Labor and look how that ended.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

Steve Marshall's been sworn in, meanwhile most of the talk about the next Labor leader involves (god forbid) Tom Koutsantonis.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Steve Marshall's been sworn in, meanwhile most of the talk about the next Labor leader involves (god forbid) Tom Koutsantonis.

What's so bad about him?

[IceAgeComing]

You (and whoever drew up the old Fairness Rule which isn't actually in place anymore) have a very skewed idea of what "fair" means in the context of single member elections.  The only fair way to do elections under FPTP or AV is to draw the boundaries without any political considerations at all and then you get whatever results you get.  As soon as you begin introducing political elements to that then you weaken the fundamental point of using single member seats - representing distinct geographic communities which have common interests - and replace them with what are in effect gerrymanders against the party who have a geographic advantage in the placement of their voters.  If you don't want wrong-winner elections - as personally I don't - then the only way to take a sure fire way which works a lot more often while also representing minority interests is to use a form of Proportional Representation and there are many options available.  The Fairness Clause basically weakened the lone advantage of using FPTP/AV as a voting system in order to try and do something that PR does a lot, lot better while also having a litany of other advantages.

Indeed the Electoral Commission said themselves post 2014 that the rule was stupid and that they were basically in a position where they had to start drawing what were effectively pro-Liberal gerrymanders to meet the rules: as well as effectively drawing Adelaide seats to be larger than rural seats which is a malapportionment and fundamentally undemocratic.  South Australia has history of pro-rural malapprotionments (the Playmander being an example of that) and I'd rather that such things don't become normalised in the name of "fairness" when making the vote of urban voters matter less than rural ones is the opposite of fair.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-18/batman-by-election-huw-parkinson/9560280
lol

[GM Team Member and Senator WB]

were SA-BEST expected to get no seats in the house of assembly or was this a very bad result for them?