Peter Malinauskas appears on track for a landslide victory in South Australia’s state election, with the party easily securing a second term less than two hours into the official count.
Labor’s primary vote was at 37% just after 8.30pm, local time (9pm AEDT), on Saturday, suggesting it would easily form government.
But the results indicated One Nation’s recent polling surge was being replicated in the vote.
Pauline Hanson said she felt “vindicated” by a primary vote of about 20% in early counting. Cory Bernardi, the former Liberal senator, looked likely to win an upper house seat as One Nation’s state leader.
“For 30 years, I’ve been fighting for this, to give people back their voice,” she told Sky News.
“I know the rest of Australia is watching what happens here … There’s a movement, there’s an undercurrent. It’s people saying ‘we’ve had a gutful’.”
Early results showed huge swings to One Nation in several regional seats, including Narungga on the Yorke Peninsula, Chaffey in the Riverland and Hammond in Murray Bridge.
University of Sydney political scientist Luke Mansillo said the results could signal a major shift, with One Nation also beating the Liberal party in metropolitan Adelaide.
He compared the result to the 1998 Queensland state election, when One Nation won 11 seats.
“It’s unquestionably a potential realignment of Australian politics. We don’t know about its longevity.
“The Liberals have lost more than half of their vote.”
One Nation blocked the ABC from attending its event in Adelaide, after the public broadcaster reported its candidate for the seat of Adelaide was the subject of an arrest warrant in the UK. The party disendorsed Aoi Baxter amid claims that he failed to attend a court date after being charged with an alleged sexual offence.
The federal Liberal MP Tony Pasin, appearing on the Sky News election night panel, admitted shortly after polls closed that holding six to eight seats would be an acceptable result for the Liberals in the circumstances. The party held 13 going into Saturday’s election.
Labor entered the campaign the clear favourite to win re-election due to the Labor leader’s personal popularity and the chaos and scandal that plagued the Liberals for much of the term. It held 29 of the 47 state seats going into Saturday’s election, with five in the hands of independents.
More than 35% of the state voted before election day, a record result, and up from about 17% at the 2022 poll.
The Liberals turned to first-term MP Ashton Hurn late last year after internal polling suggested the party was careering towards an election wipeout, making the 35-year-old the party’s fourth leader in four years. Her predecessor, Vincent Tarzia, was on track to lose his seat of Hartley.
Election victory would hand Malinauskas a mandate to deliver a second-term agenda centered on building more homes, making public education free and keeping children away from screens.
The premier faced scrutiny during the campaign about the response to the algal bloom crisis. He conceded the government had failed to fix ambulance ramping at hospitals – his signature promise at the 2022 election.
Hanson spent much of the past week campaigning in regional Bernardi.
Despite the Liberals directing supporters to put One Nation ahead of Labor, Hanson did not return the favour, opting instead to run open tickets on their how-to-vote cards in the state. The move could complicate results in some close-run seats, and slow down the final results.
One Nation’s state president, Carlos Quaremba, thanked volunteers, candidates, the executive at the party’s function.
He also thanked Channel Seven, Channel Nine, the Sky News host Paul Murray, the anti-lockdown protester Monica Smit and the Maga-aligned Turning Point Australia.
He was cheered when he pointed out that the ABC had been shut out of the event.
“I don’t want to talk to them,” he said. “It’s bad enough I’ve got to pay their wages.”
The election was also the first under the state’s new electoral laws, which ban donations to political parties.
Federal Labor will be watching the results closely but the federal Coalition, including the opposition leader, Angus Taylor, and the new Nationals leader, Matt Canavan, will be even more intensely focused on Hanson’s results.
Counting will continue until 1am on Sunday morning.
