Election test for seismic shift in political landscape
State elections could be a litmus test for the nation as to whether One Nation’s growing popularity will translate into votes.
Opinion polls point to a seismic shift in national politics ahead of the South Australian election.
The YouGov-Advertiser poll and Newspoll published on Friday pointed to a landslide election victory for the SA Labor government on March 21.
Both polls showed the Liberal Party struggling to survive against One Nation, but there were significant differences in the underlying figures.
Flinders University associate professor of public policy Josh Sunman said the polls “came in like a bombshell” and described it as “the weirdest election I’ve ever seen”.
“It’s very strange and it’s really fascinating to see what this means for the future, not just for South Australia but also for Australian politics,” he said.
“We are a test case to see if One Nation can be successful; the last time the Liberal or Labor Party did not come second in an Australian election was in the Northern Territory in 1974.
“If this were to happen here it would be a pretty shocking shift in the way we think about Australian politics and its competitive dynamics.”
Campaigning begins in earnest on Saturday as the government moves into caretaker mode.
The YouGov-Advertiser poll found that if the election were held on Friday, Labor would easily win with 37 per cent of the primary vote, while One Nation would be ahead with 22 per cent and the Liberals with 20 per cent.
A key finding of the poll was that 44 per cent of voters saw the Liberals as a fringe party incapable of governing, while 84 per cent saw Labor as a mainstream party.
The report also found Peter Malinauskas was the preferred prime minister (64 per cent) compared to Liberal leader Ashton Hurn (20 per cent).
Ms Hurn was thrust into the Liberal leadership in December, forced to pick up the pieces of a party that has failed to recover after Labor went from 27 seats in the lower house to 16 in 2022.
News polling showed an even wider gap between the parties; Labor took 44 per cent of the primary vote, One Nation 24 per cent, the Liberals 14 per cent and the Greens 12 per cent.
The poll found the Liberals would fail to hold any of the 13 seats if the results were repeated on election day.
“The difference for Labor is how much icing they have on their cake, and for the Liberal Party the question is: Can they survive?” Mr. Sunman said the following.
“Newspaper poll figures, you’re looking at potentially zero Liberals and One Nation opposition, but if you get the YouGov figures you’ll see One Nation and the Liberals kind of throwing it away.”
One Nation had run a successful recruitment campaign with 46 candidates announced and fielded, unlike 2018 when it failed to register its candidates in time for the election.
“This is an incredible achievement for them,” Mr. Sunman said.
“But there are two views here: Is One Nation trying to break through with a bold policy commitment, or is it better for One Nation to shut up?”
