{"id":561464,"date":"2026-03-24T16:31:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T16:31:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/561464\/"},"modified":"2026-03-24T16:31:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T16:31:11","slug":"liberal-party-preferences-handed-seats-to-one-nation-in-south-australian-election-analysts-say-south-australian-election-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/561464\/","title":{"rendered":"Liberal party preferences handed seats to One Nation in South Australian election, analysts say | South Australian election 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Liberal party\u2019s decision to preference One Nation above Labor at last Saturday\u2019s South Australian election<\/a> will hand seats to the rightwing, populist party, analysts say.<\/p>\n

Labor won the election with a thumping majority, while the Liberal party finished behind Pauline Hanson\u2019s party on primary votes.<\/p>\n

One Nation will have at least two seats in the upper house, led by former federal senator Cory Bernardi. In the lower house, only one seat has been declared for One Nation<\/a> but it is likely to win more with the vote still being counted.<\/p>\n

The party declared on Tuesday it \u201cis now the real opposition in SA\u201d despite the fact it will be outnumbered by the Liberal party<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cSeats that One Nation are going to win will be won on Liberal party preferences,\u201d Adelaide University emeritus professor of politics Clem McIntyre said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn each case it\u2019s going to be Labor or Liberal coming third and if the Liberals fall below Labor, they\u2019ll get eliminated and the preferences will go to One Nation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve now provided a means by which One Nation are going to have seats in the parliament and get the credibility and attention that a formal party in the House of Assembly will get.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going to mean One Nation wins seats they wouldn\u2019t otherwise have won.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ben Raue, an electoral analyst said a couple of seats were likely to be won by One Nation thanks to Liberal preferences, and that if Labor\u2019s primary vote had been five points lower, they could have won more.<\/p>\n

Liberal party elder, former prime minister John Howard, famously took a stand against One Nation and demanded they be placed last on how-to-vote cards. However, in 2017 he gave his blessings<\/a> to the Western Australian branch of the party\u2019s decision to cut a deal with them.<\/p>\n

In 2025, then-leader Peter Dutton made a deal with One Nation<\/a> to put them second.<\/p>\n

Neither of those campaigns ended in victory.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe obvious thing to say is that this is a very different strategy from the John Howard era, where both major parties acted almost like a cartel against the radical populist party,\u201d Flinders University political scientist Dr Rob Manwaring said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI presume they\u2019re making assumptions that preferencing One Nation would help them and it hasn\u2019t turned out like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also said that in a sense the Liberals should be grateful for Labor preferences for helping them pick up the handful they\u2019ve got.<\/p>\n

One Nation did not reciprocate by preferencing the Liberals.<\/p>\n

Liberal leader Ashton Hurn said<\/a> her party\u2019s decision to put One Nation ahead of Labor was \u201ca vote of no confidence in the government\u201d but was \u201cfar from\u201d a vote of confidence in One Nation.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut you\u2019ve got to put people somewhere on the ballot,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, former Liberal premier of Victoria Jeff Kennett urged the Coalition and One Nation to preference each other. Victoria\u2019s election is in November.<\/p>\n

Asked on Tuesday if the party would review the decision to preference One Nation, Hurn told ABC Adelaide they would review everything including preferences.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a number of seats that will come down to the wire because it\u2019s a genuine three-party contest,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a number of independents as well that make it complex, but look, I\u2019ll just let the results all wash through.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re going up and down, so there\u2019s no point providing a running commentary on those results.\u201d<\/p>\n

Votes are still being decided and preference flows calculated, but Labor and premier Peter Malinauskas\u2019s victory was declared early on election night. On Tuesday afternoon, Labor\u2019s primary vote was 31.8%, One Nation\u2019s was 22.4%, and the Liberal party was 19.2%. The electoral commission of SA had not declared any seats for One Nation, 27 for Labor, seven for the Liberal party, and one for an independent but was adjusting.<\/p>\n

The ABC reported 32 seats for Labor, four for the Liberals, two independents, and Ngadjuri for One Nation. It had One Nation \u201clikely\u201d in Hammond, and \u201cahead\u201d in Narungga and MacKillop.<\/p>\n

Raue said Liberal preferences would have helped One Nation win Ngadjuri, and could help in Hammond and Mackillop.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe other dynamic is that Labor won in a landslide. If Labor\u2019s vote was five points lower, One Nation could be competitive in some of those fringe seats,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf Labor was weaker, the Liberals would have helped them in a bunch more seats.<\/p>\n

\u201cDoes it matter that the Liberals preferenced One Nation? Absolutely.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Liberal party\u2019s decision to preference One Nation above Labor at last Saturday\u2019s South Australian election will hand…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":561465,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":{"0":"post-561464","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-australia","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=561464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561464\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/561465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=561464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=561464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=561464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}