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2026 South Australian state election
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The 2026 South Australian state election will be held on 21 March 2026 to elect members to the 56th Parliament of South Australia. All 47 seats in the House of Assembly (the lower house, whose members were elected at the 2022 election), and half the seats in the Legislative Council (the upper house, last filled at the 2018 election) are up for re-election.
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The incumbent Labor government, led by Premier Peter Malinauskas, will attempt to win a second four-year term against the Liberal opposition, led by party leader Vincent Tarzia.
South Australia has compulsory voting, uses full-preference instant-runoff voting for single-member electorates in the lower house, and optional preference single transferable voting in the proportionally represented upper house. The election will be conducted by the Electoral Commission of South Australia (ECSA), an independent body answerable to Parliament.
The election will be held on the same day as the South Australian First Nations Voice election.[1][2]
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Background
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At the 2022 election, the South Australian Labor Party won government after spending four years in opposition. The party, led by Peter Malinauskas, gained 8 seats to have a four-seat majority in the House of Assembly, while the incumbent South Australian Liberal Party government, led by Premier Steven Marshall, lost a total of nine seats to Labor and independents. Statewide the Labor Party won 54.59% of the two-party preferred vote, which was a swing of over 6.5%.[3][4][5][6]
In the Legislative Council, Labor won five seats, the Liberals won four and the Greens and One Nation both won one seat each. As a result, the Labor government held a total of nine seats and the Liberal held eight, with five on the crossbench, including two Greens, two SA-Best representatives and a single One Nation seat held by Sarah Game).[3][4][5] Followign the election, the Presidency of the council was unexpectedly retained by Liberal MLC Terry Stephens, meaning the Labor government required an additional two non-government votes for passage of legislation.[3][4][5]
By-elections
Three by-elections have been held during the parliament's four-year term. A by-election in Bragg was held in July 2022 and the seat was retained by the Liberals. In March 2024 the Labor Party gained the seat of Dunstan, which had belonged to former Liberal Premier Steven Marshall. Labor's majority therefore increased by one, though when Leon Bignell was elected to the position of Speaker of the Assembly the following month, the party composition returned to its post-election state, as the Speaker is required to renounce party ties for the duration of their speakership.[7]
Labor again gained when the party won the November 2024 by-election in the seat of Black, recording a double-digit swing. The result reduced the Liberals to 13 members in the lower house, their worst parliamentary position in nearly a century.[8]
Legislative Council changes
As of May 2025, there have been three alterations to the post-election party composition in the Legislative Council. SA-Best MLC Frank Pangallo left the party and moved to the crossbench to sit as an independent in December 2023.[9] Liberal MLC Jing Lee became an independent and moved to the crossbench in January 2025,[10] and Greens MLC Tammy Franks quit the party and sat as an independent in May 2025.[11]
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Pendulum
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The pendulum includes mid-term affiliation changes and by-election outcomes, in particular the Dunstan by-election and Black by-election which saw Labor take both seats away from the Liberals.
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Redistributed notional pendulum
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A redistribution, required after each election, was finalised by the South Australian Electoral Districts Boundaries Commission in December 2024. The below post-redistribution pendulum shows all seats by their redistributed Labor or Liberal notional two-party-preferred margin.[12][13]
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Date
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The last state election was held on 19 March 2022 to elect members for the House of Assembly and half of the members in the Legislative Council. In South Australia, section 28 of the Constitution Act 1934, as amended in 2001, directs that parliaments have fixed four-year terms, and elections must be held on the third Saturday in March every four years unless this date falls the day after Good Friday, occurs within the same month as a federal election, or the conduct of the election could be adversely affected by a state disaster. Section 28 also states that the Governor may also dissolve the Assembly and call an election for an earlier date if the government has lost the confidence of the Assembly or a bill of special importance has been rejected by the Legislative Council. Section 41 states that both the Council and the Assembly may also be dissolved simultaneously if a deadlock occurs between them.[14]
The Electoral (Miscellaneous) Amendment Act 2013[15] introduced set dates for writs for general elections in South Australia. The writ sets the dates for the close of the electoral roll and the close of nominations for an election. The Electoral Act 1985 requires that, for a general election, the writ be issued 28 days before the date fixed for polling (S47(2a)) and the electoral roll be closed at 12 noon, six days after the issue of the writ (S48(3(a)(i))). The close of nominations will be at 12 noon three days after the close of rolls (Electoral Act 1985 S48(4)(a) and S4(1)).[16][17][18]
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Opinion polling
Voting intention
House of Assembly
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Legislative Council
Leadership approval
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Retiring MPs
Liberal
- John Gardner MHA (Morialta) – announced 13 December 2024[24]
- David Pisoni MHA (Unley) – announced 8 October 2024[25]
Greens
- Tammy Franks MLC – announced 30 September 2024[26]
Independent
- Dan Cregan MHA (Kavel) – announced 28 January 2025[27]
See also
References
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