Here are my predictions for the South Australian election on March 21.
The most recent article by yours truly appearing on Switzer Daily was published under the title “Disruptor David Littleproud enjoys another win”. It concluded with this statement: “When Sussan Ley vacates her rural seat of Farrer, the Nationals will stand a candidate – and it is a very good bet that the seat will move from the Liberal Party column to that of the National Party.”
The date of that statement was Monday 16 February – made before we even knew for sure that there would be a Farrer by-election. Anyway, I have revised my prediction to this extent. I still predict that the Liberal Party will lose Farrer but, for the moment I reserve the possibility that the seat will be won by the Nationals, the One Nation Party or the independent Michelle Milthorpe, who performed very creditably against Ley at the general election in May 2025. Some day late in April I’ll make a more definite prediction for readers of Switzer Daily.
The above was my second article for this year. In my first I made a series of predictions late in January and this was one of them:
On the states the conventional view is that Labor’s Peter Malinauskas will lead Labor to a very solid victory in South Australia at the general election on Saturday 21 March. I’ll give details of my predictions for that event in my second or third 2026 article for Switzer Daily. That will include my South Australian pendulum which already appears on my website.
To understand my detailed predictions, one needs to see the current Mackerras Pendulum which is below.
My above pendulum shows the seats as they were most recently won, at the general election in 2022 or at a subsequent by-election in 2024 – Black and Dunstan. There has been a minor change of boundaries, but it is to be noted that the old seat of Frome has been re-named Ngadjuri. I’m in favour of that re-naming, but there would be plenty of South Australians who would object because it is an example of what is now known as “cancel culture”. I don’t mind being described as “woke”.
It is to be noted that there are 29 Labor seats shown on the left-hand side of my pendulum. I predict Labor will win all those seats again. I also predict that Labor will gain these five seats from the Liberal Party: Colton, Hartley, Morialta, Ngadjuri and Unley. Therefore, I am predicting that there will be 34 Labor members in the new House of Assembly.
The above forecasts mean that I am predicting these 13 seats will not be won by Labor – listed in alphabetical order: Bragg, Chaffey, Finniss, Flinders, Hammond, Heysen, Kavel, MacKillop, Morphett, Mount Gambier, Narungga, Schubert and Stuart. My prediction for them is that there will be six for the Liberal Party, five independents and two for the One Nation Party. I am not willing to name seats here beyond stating this: the five seats for the Liberals will include Schubert, held by party leader Ashton Hurn. The two seats for One Nation will both lie outside of the Adelaide metropolitan area. Therefore, Hurn will still be the Leader of the Opposition.
In the Legislative Council the Liberal Party will also continue to be the second largest party. This upper house (like its equivalents in the Senate and the Legislative Councils of New South Wales and Western Australia) is elected from the state voting as one electorate in a proportional representation system. Of the 11 seats up for re-election I predict four for Labor (incumbents Emily Bourke, Mira El Dannawi and Justin Hanson and Hilton Gumbys who is not an incumbent), two Liberals (incumbents Ben Hood and Heide Girolamo), three for the One Nation Party (non- incumbents Cory Bernardi, Carlos Quaremba and Rebecca Hewett) one Green (non-incumbent Melanie Selwood) and one for SA Best (incumbent Connie Benaros).
Members serve for terms of eight years so the above lot will be joined by eleven elected in 2022 for terms expiring in 2030. Those numbers are five Labor, four Liberals, one for the Greens and one member describing herself as “Sarah Game Fair Go for Australians”. Therefore, I predict the total numbers to be nine Labor, six Liberals, three for One Nation, two Greens, one for SA Best and Sarah Game. It is worth recording, however, that Game was elected in 2022 under the description of “Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party” but, like so many members elected under that name, she fell out with Pauline Hanson. She resigned from One Nation in May 2025 and registered the new party name, under which she now sits. She has two candidates standing for the Legislative Council at this election, but neither is likely to be elected.
(Malcolm Mackerras is an honorary fellow at Australian Catholic University.)
