As South Australia’s Liberals struggle to stay in the fight, will their preferences usher in One Nation? | South Australian election 2026
South Australian politics rarely takes center stage in national news, but this Saturday’s state elections will be watched more closely than ever for potential federal ramifications.
It’s turning out to be the perfect storm for a struggling Liberal party: under pressure from a popular first-term Labor government, with One Nation eating away at the Liberal base. The election will be the first test of One Nation’s growing support across the country; federal polls show Pauline Hanson’s party regularly wins more votes than a weakened Coalition.
One of the key unknowns is how preferences will flow in the seats where One Nation features in the final preference count, given the Liberal party’s decision to put itself above Labor in terms of how to vote.
All six South Australian polls released this year showed Labor well ahead and One Nation leading the Liberals.
But there was quite a bit of variety. Labour’s primary vote varies between 35% and 44%. One Nation was 10 percentage points ahead of the Liberals in the Roy Morgan poll, but just one point ahead in the previous two polls. One Nation appears to have received support mostly from the Liberals, but Labor’s vote has also fallen since the peaks in 2025.
The latest poll, an Advertiser/YouGov poll published on Wednesday, gave Labor 38% of the primary vote, One Nation 22% and the Liberals 19%.
We have no precedent for this kind of polling trend, so it’s hard to know how the results will pan out.
If One Nation gets over 20% of the vote statewide, it will likely reach 30-40% in some regional seats and therefore likely be in the top two. If there is a race against a Liberal candidate, the preferences of Labor and other parties on the left will be critically important and these preferences are unlikely to flow strongly one way or the other.
Liberal leader Ashton Hurn justified his decision to put One Nation ahead of Labor by saying his party was “busy getting rid of the ALP”.
“This is a vote of no confidence in the government. I am focused on defeating it in Saturday’s elections.”
But if Liberal support falls as much as the polls suggest, remaining Liberal voters may well choose the One Nation candidate over their Labor rivals in some seats.
The South Australian Liberal party has won only one election in the last quarter-century, coming to power in 2018. Labor won power in 2022 under Peter Malinauskas, and his government has proven broadly popular, even allowing sporadic recent polls.
This election late last year was a bit like the Western Australian election: Labor won a huge majority against a weakened opposition that was reduced to just a handful of seats. But as One Nation gained power, things became more complicated.
We don’t know if One Nation will poll as polls indicate. Some voters may return to their traditional homes, and the presence of known local members may slow the flight of Liberal voters to One Nation in some places. But if One Nation gets more than 20 per cent of the vote, it will have a very significant impact, particularly in regional areas and the outer suburbs where it generally performs best.
34 of South Australia’s 47 seats are in Greater Adelaide, and the Liberals currently hold only six of those seats, all fairly marginal. The party appears to be in deep trouble in seats such as Unley, Morialta, Colton and Morphett.
The Liberals’ regional seats have traditionally been their safest, but in current circumstances some of these are in danger from One Nation as well as the Independents.
A number of regional seats are already held by independents, with serious challengers in these seats such as Flinders and Finniss. A Nation could stand a chance of winning seats like Chaffey, a rural seat stretching all the way to the Victorian border.
Labor is unlikely to lose seats to One Nation, but we can expect to see a One Nation contest against Labor in some outer suburban electorates such as Taylor and Elizabeth.
