One Nation has secured a second seat in South Australia, according to ABC projections.
On Friday afternoon, Pauline Hanson’s party was sitting on a 22.3% primary vote, ahead of the Liberals on 19.4%. As expected, Labor won Saturday’s election in a landslide.
The polls in the lead-up to the election showed the surge in support for the anti-immigration, rightwing populist party, which has now won its first lower house seat outside Queensland.
An Advertiser/YouGov poll showed most supporters were voting for One Nation as a protest vote against the major parties, with just one in 10 voting for them because of their policies.
The former federal Liberal senator Cory Bernardi, who joined the party in February, will lead One Nation in the state’s upper house, the legislative council. He is set to be joined by two other One Nation MLCs.
They will work alongside Sarah Game, who became the first person elected to the state parliament from One Nation at the 2022 election. She defected in 2025 to form her own party.
The SA result was the first proof that One Nation’s polling figures could be translated into votes at the ballot box, and it has left the major parties trying to work out how to handle the threat.
The next test will be the 9 May Farrer byelection, followed by the Victorian and NSW elections.
Sign up for the Breaking News Australia emailThe complexity of the contest, with One Nation getting more votes than the Liberals and a range of independents in the mix, along with complicated preference flows, make predictions tricky, but the ABC on Friday projected that One Nation will win in Hammond.
Their candidate, Robert Roylance, is ahead of Labor’s Simone Bailey in the Murraylands seat with 55.5% of the vote to 44.5%.
The ABC had already called Ngadjuri for One Nation – the new MP, David Paton, is referring to it as “Frome” on Facebook.
Frome was renamed Ngadjuri in 2024 over traditional owners’ concerns over its namesake, Edward Charles Frome, who burned down an Aboriginal village as an act of retribution against the Milmenrura people.
The seat was held by Liberal Penny Pratt, but the final contest was between Paton and Labor stalwart Tony Piccolo, who shifted from his safe Labor seat of Light to contest it.
The national broadcaster also has the party ahead in two more seats – MacKillop and Narungga.
The state’s electoral commission, which is still counting votes, has One Nation leading in the same four seats.
In Hammond, it has the two-party-preferred count at 53.7% for Roylance to 46.3% for Bailey.
The final distribution of preferences will happen next week.
Analysts say the Liberal party’s decision to preference One Nation above Labor helped boost the party’s vote and was responsible for them winning seats.
The South Australian Liberal senator Andrew McLachlan this week said the party “should always preference One Nation last”.
“As a Liberal who engages with multicultural communities, I see first-hand the impact of One Nations’s toxic politics on my fellow Australians,” he said.
The Liberal party is projected to win at least four seats, and they are ahead in five, so they will remain the official opposition.
The opposition has been rocked by scandals and leadership changes, with Ashton Hurn given only about 100 days as leader before the poll.
Premier Peter Malinauskas said he would work with everyone in parliament despite “points of difference and disagreement”.
He has been critical of One Nation’s lack of policies for the state, and during the campaign reminded voters that Hanson was from Queensland, not SA.
In her election night speech, Hanson referenced that jab and said she was leaving “landmines” that could “explode” in SA, in terms of elected MPs.
“Pauline Hanson’s election night speech was about laying landmines, my remarks are about bringing people together,” Malinauskas later said.
