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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
National
Amy Remeikis

Liberals triumph in South Australian election – as it happened

South Australia’s Liberal Leader Steven Marshall gives a thumbs up to a voter at a polling station in Adelaide
South Australia’s Liberal Leader Steven Marshall gives a thumbs up to a voter at a polling station in Adelaide. Photograph: Morgan Sette/AAP

The wrap

So for the first time since 1997, Nick Xenophon does not have a seat in an Australian parliament.

That is going to bring about its own change in South Australian politics. As well as his federal team. Keep an eye on that one.

Ged Kearney has signalled pretty strongly that Labor is taking its Batman lessons federally. Bill Shorten was in wholehearted agreement. So watch that space as well.

And Malcolm Turnbull just got another state on board with his national energy guarantee, plus another friendly face at Coag meetings. The Liberals will be looking at the SA result for its wider implications … but I don’t know if you can take it as part of a wider trend towards the Liberals.

But they will be taking note of Steven Marshall’s very early call that he would not be dealing with SA Best, which you could say played the role of One Nation in this election, and what that meant for a more concrete result, as well as the poor performance of Cory Bernardi’s party in his home state.

And, finally, the Greens have their own lessons to examine from the Batman loss and what it means for the party moving forwards. From what I am hearing (and it is very early mail) the Greens have some tough decisions to make about the party’s direction, and not just in Victoria.

All in all, tonight’s elections have set off a ripple effect for Australia’s political parties, as the country gears up for the next federal election. We have a Senate-only sitting week next week, which we will be covering, live, before the entire parliament is back, with Ged Kearney, on 26 March.

(Oh, and the Liberal party retained Cottesloe in the WA byelection)

Thank you to the Guardian Australia team for helping drag me across the line tonight, and for you, for reading and playing along, with my feverish blogging. I will be back with you with Politics Live on Monday. But in the mean time, enjoy what is left of your weekend, maintain the rage, and spend at least some time logged off. We’ll be sure to catch you up on anything you miss.

Night!

Updated

Let’s take another look at the seats that are still in play in South Australia.

The Liberal party is leading in 25 seats, four of these seats by relatively slim majorities:

  • Adelaide by 316 votes (1.4%)
  • King by 401 votes (1.2%)
  • Newland by 298 votes (0.9%)
  • Heysen by 792 votes (2.7%)

Even if SA Best catches up in Heysen, it’s also possible Nick Xenophon’s party will fall into third and the Liberal party will win easily over Labor.

The Liberals need to stay in the lead in three out of these four seats to form a majority, and they are in a good position to do so. But their position isn’t quite as certain as they looked earlier, or as the parties are treating the situation.

They are also trailing in the seat of Mawson by 232 votes (1.6%).

Updated

He finishes with this:

It’s been way too long between drinks for the Liberal party in South Australia. Now, we have been given a wonderful opportunity by the people of South Australia. I thank the people of South Australia. We specifically asked them to give us a majority government because we know that a majority government will be able to drive the reform agenda that we so desperately need here in South Australia. I thank the people ofSouth Australia for doing that and I absolutely guarantee, I give you my commitment, that I and every single person in the team will be working diligently every day over the next four years so that we can build a brighter future, a better future for South Australia and I genuinely support and appreciate everybody’s support. Thank you very much.

And he walks off to the same track he walked in on, The Man. Which has lyrics like this:

Updated

Errrrr – it sounds as though Steven Marshall has just thanked John Howard ahead of Malcolm Turnbull.

After the last election, he offered to help me in any way he could. The counsel that he provided was invaluable. He came and spoke to our party room. He really has been a great prime minister for Australia, but, personally, I have always found him to be just such a great contributor, not judging but always encouraging and I will be very grateful. I thank the prime minister for coming to [South] Australia, Julie Bishop for coming to South Australia and supporting us in our campaign to take back government. The last time we took government from Labor in South Australia was 25 years ago.

Updated

“Jay rang to give his congratulations to the Liberal team, I would like to thank Jay for his call, to his service to this state as premier for six years, look, it is a tough job but I am really looking forward to it,” Steven Marshall says.

A massive thank you to the people of South Australia who have put their trust, their faith in me and the Liberal team for a new dawn, a new dawn for South Australia!

Updated

Steven Marshall becomes the 46th premier of South Australia

And to the strains of the Killers’ The Man, Steven Marshall takes the stage.

Not the most humble of tracks.

Updated

Bill Shorten and Ged Kearney have claimed victory in Batman in two rousing speeches, frequently interrupted by the crowd interrupting into chant or song.

Shorten promised voters that Labor would not take victory in Batman to mean that they could ignore the demands of progressive voters or those who had turned away from Labor:

Tonight I want to make a promise to all of the voters of Batman, the ones who voted for Labor and the ones who voted for other candidates ... that Labor hears the lesson and the message of Batman.

Shorten said he knew many voters were “disillusioned with politics as usual”.

Tonight in this venue we celebrate a victory for Labor, but beyond this room into the lounge rooms of Batman more broadly in Australia, I promise that we do not treat this election campaign as a triumph and an end in itself, but as another step in the way to giving Australians the sort of government they want with the policies that make a difference to everyday Australians.

Kearney, speaking over chants of “Ged! Ged! Ged!”, said: “Oh, they said we’d never do it. But we did.” She thanked Alex Bhathal for a “hard-fought campaign”, then addressed the voters of Batman:

I want the people of Batman to know that I have listened, that Bill Shorten has listened, and we are going to take everything you have said to Canberra.

Kearney is the first woman elected to the seat of Batman in its 110-year history, and brings the proportion of women in the federal Labor caucus to 48%.

Updated

Walking in to his election party, the SA Liberal leader, Steven Marshall, told the ABC his plan was to “make a speech and then start partying”.

Updated

Calla Wahlquist will have more for you in just a moment but as a taster from Ged Kearney’s speech:

Ooh, they said we’d never do it, but we did. Bill has already said it all, our future PM, I might add … but what I just want to say is this is a victory for true Labor values.

Because, our campaign spoke to everyone from the ring road to the river. We spoke to local issues … and we spoke to national progressive values. Workers’ rights, climate change, social justice and a better Australia.

Kearney also thanked Alex Bhathal for a “hard-fought campaign”.

Updated

We’ll bring you some of Ged’s speech as soon as we can.

Updated

Jay Weatherill:

I suppose the other thing that as I’ve got another role, it’s leader of the Labor party. And this great party, and all of its supporters, has sustained me and our government throughout the whole of this period, this 16-year period. It’s the strength of the Labor party and the Labor movement more generally. That’s allowed us to continue to really replicate these Labor governments, it’s also the reason why we remain strong now. As we leave government, we leave government united, strong and with a real sense of purpose. So ensure that all of you keep your heads high, because you have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of in a loss, losses occur.

And what we always were seeking to do was to fight to win, we never at any stage in this process sought to save the furniture or sought to somehow just limit the loss, we were always fighting for victory. And we’ll return to that quest at some stage in the future.

That was, you have to say, a very warm and gracious concession speech. A true class act.

Updated

About a quarter of votes for the SA Legislative Council have now been counted.

The Liberal party leads with 31.5%, down from 36% in 2014. Labor’s vote has dropped from 31% to 30%. This would give each party at least three seats, with both parties in with a good shot of winning a fourth seat.

SA Best is on 19%, which would give them two seats with an outside chance of a third.

This compares with 12% for the Nick Xenophon-endorsed team in 2014.

The Greens vote has dropped from 6.5% to 5.6%. This amounts to about two-thirds of a quota.

Cory Bernardi’s Australian Conservatives are on 3.5%, compared with 4.4% for their predecessor Family First in 2014. This is less than half of a quota.

The Dignity party, which is running the sitting MLC Kelly Vincent, has doubled its vote from 0.9% to 1.9%, but that won’t be enough to win a seat.

On these numbers, which could change, you’d expect to see four Liberals, four Labor, two SA Best and one Green. This would mean that Dignity’s Kelly Vincent and Conservatives’ Robert Brokenshire would both lose their seats to SA Best’s Connie Bonaros and Frank Pangallo.

This would give a total result of eight Labor, eight Liberal, two SA Best, two Greens, one Conservative and one seat for independent John Darley, a former Xenophon ally.

Updated

Weatherill said he had called the Liberal leader, Steven Marshall, to concede not so long ago, and, well, I’ll let him tell you:

I called Steven Marshall and conceded that he had won this state election. Now, I’m so sorry that we couldn’t bring home another one to you. But I passed on to Steven Marshall my congratulations from our party, on his personal achievement, and also the achievement of his candidates, in winning their seats, and forming a government for the state of South Australia. It’s an enormous privilege to be premier of South Australia. And I wished him all the best on his endeavours to really take that role and make it his own role. One of the things we both agree on is this is a great state and he has all of our support to take on this most important role.

Updated

Jay Weatherill concedes defeat in South Australia

South Australia’s Labor leader, Jay Weatherill, has taken to the stage in Adelaide to concede defeat after 16 years of ALP rule:

I am sorry I could not bring home another victory, but I do feel like one of those horses who has won four Melbourne Cups and I think the handicap has caught up to us on this occasion.

Updated

“Friends, I want to thank in particular though, our outstanding candidate Ged Kearney.”

The crowd chants “Ged, Ged, Ged” as Shorten goes on to thank the Labor campaign director, and various Labor peeps, and then asks for a moment’s reflection to “thank the people of Batman”.

And tonight I want to make a promise to all of the voters of Batman, the ones who voted for Labor and the ones that voted for other candidates, I want to make this promise, that Labor hears the message and lesson of Batman …

Many voters are disillusioned with politics as usual … they have a sense that the system is not working for ordinary people.

Updated

Ged Kearney and Bill Shorten claim victory in Batman

The cheers loud and the smiles are broad as the Labor faithful welcome Ged Kearney to the stage as the incoming MP for Batman.

I haven’t seen Bill Shorten look this happy since Kristina Keneally lost Bennelong.

He raises Kearney’s hand high and the crowd goes wild.

“Friends, I said in 2016 that Labor was back, I can now say in 2017 that Labor is back in Batman. (Except it is 2018.)

“From the bookmakers to the commentators they wrote Labor off in Batman, but you have proved them wrong – thank you!”

Updated

Oh look - turns out quotas work.

Updated

Jay Weatherill looks almost ready to address his election party, where he will be conceding the night to the Liberals.

For a quick recap of the night in Batman, head here.

Updated

A few of you have pointed out this tweet from earlier in the day.

So, does the opposite also prove true, or …

Updated

The Liberal party soiree has just greeted the call of the election for their team with a huge roar.

Here at the Hackney hotel in the leafy inner east of Adelaide, the atmosphere is of course considerably more lively than at the SA Best HQ.

After winning the popular vote at three of the past four elections, only to remain in opposition for 16 years, even the most confident Liberals harboured doubts that tonight would be their night.

Most candidates are still at their local events but will be pouring in shortly. The federal senator David Fawcett told Guardian Australia: “You could feel it over the final couple of weeks, there was a real mood for change and with the of scrutiny SA Best, people saw they weren’t the saviour, therefore it had to be us.”

Updated

Christopher Pyne says the SA result is part of a wider trend towards the Liberal party, pointing to its win in Tasmania as well (Queensland would be the outlier there, given that Labor was returned with a majority).

But Pyne tells Sky that elections are decided “on the economy” which is why he believes Malcolm Turnbull will win the next election.

That might be a little too simplistic. There was a swing against the Liberals in Bennelong (on the primary vote) and there has been a swing against the Liberals in South Australia (on the primary vote).

South Australia had the same party in power for 16 years and saw some pretty big boundary changes. Tasmania is always a crap shoot and Turnbull is coming up to his 30th Newspoll loss in a row.

Updated

Alex Bhathal congratulates Ged Kearney in concession speech

The longtime Greens candidate Alex Bhathal has given a gracious concession speech, congratulating Ged Kearney on her win, and saying: “I’ve always said regardless of the result we would have a strong woman member from a caring profession.”

Bhathal said the result was “obviously” not what the Greens wanted but said it had been an “honour” to run against Kearney.

According to Ben Eltham, who is at the Greens event, Bhathal thanked her campaign team, the Greens leader, Richard Di Natale, Adam Bandt, Janet Rice, the state MP Lidia Thorpe, and the parents of Thornbury primary school, saying: “I know this has been a difficult night.”

Kearney and Bhathal have been cordial throughout the campaign, admitting to being similar candidates: professional, progressive women who have very similar personal political opinions. The difference has been their party policies.

Commentators have already put the blame for the unexpected Greens loss on toxic infighting but Di Natale reportedly told the crowd it was due to Labor doing a preference deal with rightwing parties.

Both Labor and the Greens preferenced each other over other parties, and Kearney is leading on primary votes.

Updated

The last time the Liberals held a majority government in South Australia, Paul Keating was prime minister.

We are now waiting on Ged Kearney to address her party in Batman.

We’ve received results from the first pre-poll booth. It’s come from the Labor heartland of Bundoora at the northern end of the seat. The Greens gained swings in both election-day booths in Bundoora, but has gone backwards by 2.7% in Bundoora’s pre-poll booth.

This is a small booth, but it seems clear that the Greens will not pick up the vote they need in the pre-poll, which confirms that Labor’s Ged Kearney will win the Batman byelection.

We don’t know precisely how many votes are yet to report in Batman, but my rough count suggests the Greens would need at least 57% of the remaining votes to win. That’s not going to happen.

Updated

There are a lot of very disappointed faces at the Greens party, not counting Alex Bhathal and Richard Di Natale’s.

Given what we saw come out internally within the Greens during the byelection (with a pretty big fight between an increasingly factionally divided party) and the fight over what the Greens should be standing for, expect to see more fallout over the next couple of months, and not just in Victoria.

Di Natale just predicted Bhathal would come back and win Batman (or whatever it is renamed) at the next federal election, but I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Ged Kearney was chosen for a reason. Labor has also just proven its taxation policies are not the election poison, as has been predicted, and has earmarked inequality as the foundation of its campaign heading into the next election – which has already begun.

Bhathal has now lost Batman six times.

Updated

Some readers may be confused about how the Liberal party is on track for a majority despite pretty much no seats changing hands.

This is because the recent electoral redistribution radically redraw the map to turn a number of Labor seats into notional Liberal seats.

The Liberal party managed a majority of the statewide two-party-preferred vote in 2010 and 2014, winning 53% in 2014, but couldn’t manage to form government at either election.

South Australian law required the electoral commission to draw boundaries which would give a majority of seats to a party who has won a majority of the two-party-preferred vote.

The commission threw up its hands after the 2010 election and insisted it couldn’t achieve this outcome, but did do so after the 2014 election. It looks as though the Liberal party has mostly won those redrawn seats, without winning much more.

Updated

Greens concede Batman byelection to Labor

Adam Bandt has taken the stage at Alex Bhathal’s party and says preferences went against the Greens.

But he is claiming victory in making climate change an issue across Australia.

The party leader, Richard Di Natale, said it was a very “tight-run race” but “because of all the preferences of all the hard-right parties … that we are just going to fall short tonight”.

Updated

So for the first time in 16 years, South Australia will have a new government, with the Liberals all but having claimed victory.

Christopher Pyne is having a VERY good night –a not only has Steven Marshall got across the line, but Cory Bernardi’s Australian Conservatives have not had the showing that they may have expected to have, with SA Best taking AC’s portion of the vote.

Updated

Liberals to win South Australian election

The Liberal party will form a majority government in South Australia.

Ben Raue is ready to call it:

We have been waiting for votes from Liberal leader Steven Marshall’s seat, and we’ve now received these, confirming his re-election, with votes firming up in some other close races.

The current count has the Liberal party on 25 seats, Labor on 18, independents on three, with Heysen remaining in doubt.

Updated

The most interesting seat in South Australia right now is in Heysen.

Right now the Liberal party’s Josh Teague leads SA Best’s John Illingworth with 51.8% after preferences.

The ABC computer suggests this is enough for SA Best to squeak into the lead once the remaining booths report. But it assumes SA Best stay in the top two.

SA Best is on 24% of the primary vote, with Labor on 19% and the Greens on 12.5%. The Greens recommended preferences to Labor. If their votes tend to favour Labor, that could well see Labor’s candidate overtake Illingworth, at which point SA Best preferences would presumably help the Liberal party to win the seat.

Unless the Liberal party gains ground on SA Best in the remaining booths, we definitely won’t be able to call this seat until those Greens preferences are distributed.

Updated

The Liberal party looks like having 23 seats in South Australia, winning three seats from Labor (Colton, King and Mawson), which, if that count holds, means they just need one more to win government in their own right for the first time in 16 years.

Fun fact: this is the first election that the Liberals have used the i360 system, which, in its most basic form, allows for targeted campaigning. It’s a system which takes information people give, through surveys and what not, and then builds a targeted response – what exactly will win that person’s vote?

The Liberals have been a little behind in using technology, but it looks as though that is changing. Seriously, the next federal election is going to be INSANE.

Updated

At SA Best function at Palace Nova in Adelaide, the mood was getting grim with results below expectations among the crowd watching the ABC News results come in.

A groan that greeted projections that Nick Xenophon would lose in Hartley turned into a cheer as the man himself walked in.

A subdued, tired-looking Xenophon declared that SA Best had broken the two-party duopoly by coming second in a range of seats, highlighting Joe Hill’s performance in Finnis and a potential victory in Heysen.

There were some pantomime boos at mention of the underhanded tactics by the major parties and the pokies lobby.

The biggest cheer came when Xenophon said it wasn’t over in Hartley, urging everyone to wait for the preferences to come in (even though Labor, the Liberals, the Greens and the Australian Conservatives have all preferenced against him).

He concluded with a promise to “make the parliament a work horse not a rocking horse”, and a movie suggestion: “Not sure if you all want to watch something other than the election. Maybe Winston Churchill, Our Darkest Hour?”

Updated

Liberals getting closer to majority government in South Australia

It looks as though the Turnbull government is about to get another state on board for its national energy guarantee (remember that?).

From Ben Raue:

The Liberal party is getting closer to winning a majority in South Australia.
By my count, they are on 22 seats, with Labor trailing on 18 seats.

The Liberal party are still competing with Labor in Adelaide and Waite, and with SA Best in Heysen.

We have on data from the marginal Liberal seat of Dunstan. If they can hold the other seats they are leading, and win two of these four, they’ll hold a majority.

Updated

The Greens have not conceded as yet but Labor is confident enough to declare Ged Kearney as the winner of the Batman byelection contest.

And the party tells me, it looks like doing it with a slight swing to it to boot.

Updated

Labor calls Batman

And from my feverish, tea-stained throne, this is also what I am hearing:

Updated

We now have all but two election-day booths reporting results in Batman and the swing to Labor has blown out to 1.7%.

We are still waiting for up to 30,000 pre-poll and postal votes, with Labor leading by about 3,000 votes. The Greens would need about 55% of the remaining votes, which would be quite remarkable.

I’m not calling Batman for Labor quite yet but we’re getting close.

Updated

Nick Xenophon calls result 'end of the beginning'

Nick Xenophon has not conceded but he has admitted he is not having the night he thought he would be having when he announced his campaign:

This is, this is not the beginning of the end, it’s actually the end of the beginning. Because I think we’re going to see some very interesting things happening. We’ll have a presence in the state parliament and we’ll build on that presence and build on it, so that every day, for the next four years, we’ll hold the government, the next government of South Australia, to account. We’ll hold the opposition to account, we’ll make the parliament a work house, not the rocking horse it is now. Let’s wait and see what happens. It will be a long night. We won’t have an idea for three or four days as to what is happening. It could be some issues about some of the misleading material put out by the major parties and the hotels association. My final remarks to you is thank you to the bottom of your heart, to the campaign team, to all the candidates who did a very brave thing. It takes a lot of courage to run for parliament and it’s been pretty nerve-wracking for a lot of people, pretty daunting. But every one of the candidates I ran with did SA Best proud and did the state proud for the way they conducted themselves.

Updated

The South Australian result is looking fairly dismal for SA Best at the moment. By my quick count, I have the Liberals on 19 seats, Labor on 17 seats, three independents, and Labor and Liberal still competing for five close seats (with no data from two other marginal seats).

SA Best only appears to have a good shot at winning a single seat – the Adelaide Hills district of Heysen, in the heart of the federal seat of Mayo.

It has come in the top two in quite a few seats but in most of them it is not polling enough to have a chance of winning. It is sitting on just under 15% of the statewide vote right now.

SA Best’s leader, Nick Xenophon, is sitting on a primary vote of 26% in Hartley. That’s about 15 percentage points behind the Liberal MP, Vincent Tarzia. He’s only managing 42% of the vote after preferences. Unless there is a dramatic shift in the remaining booths, Xenophon will be without a seat at the end of the night.

Updated

I’m listening to a lot of commentary, and it might be the fact that I am still slightly feverish, but I’m a little shocked at the number of people pointing out that the primary vote for the major parties in the South Australian election looks like being fairly low.

If anyone has been paying attention to politics at any time in the last few years, a low primary vote for the majors is nothing new. The Liberals primary vote is traditionally higher than Labor’s but even that has been dropping. Because, and I know this probably shouldn’t be the newsflash it seems to be, people are sort of sick of politics.

And so they lodge their votes with the third-party choices. Which we are seeing growing. And the biggest problem the Liberals will have moving forwards is there seems to be more third-party choices emerging among its voters, cannibalising its vote, then there is on the Labor side of the political fence.

And the biggest issue for both major parties there is those preference flows can go anywhere. One Nation, SA Best and to a lesser extent, Australian Conservative voters do not follow how-to-vote cards.

There is a trend towards voters changing how they view elections. But the political parties still seem a little behind that -– it is going to be a very interesting time ahead of us.

Updated

Nick Xenophon addresses the crowd

“It has been quite an election campaign,” Nick Xenophon tells his party, acknowledging that the results “have been mixed”.

“We have come second in a whole swag of seats … so that is a pretty good foundation to build on,” he says, adding: “This has been an incredible campaign, when you consider we did this on a shoestring, when you consider the major parties spent more time fighting SA Best [than each other].”

He also mentions the campaign the hotels industry ran against his party in “a brutal and bruising campaign”.

Updated

Labor inches towards victory in Batman

The swing to Labor is now up over 1% in Batman, which would double their margin in the seat from 1% to 2%.

Labor has gained a swing of almost 11% in the Northcote South booth in the Greens’ heartland. The Greens polled about 66% after preferences at this booth in 2016 but this has dropped to about 55%.

There are a bunch of quite strong swings to the Greens at the northern end of the seat, gaining 5.1% in Kingsbury and 4.6% in Burbank.

But these booths are being outweighed by a lot of small swings to Labor in the centre of the seat and some whacking big swings to Labor at the southern end.

Updated

The longtime Labor strategist Bruce Hawker just told the Sky News panel he is sitting on that “obviously, they are not going to win” in relation to Labor’s chances in South Australia.

He thinks it is an “extraordinary result” though, that Labor has held on to some core seats, given the Queensland experience in 2012 (which he has intimate knowledge of) which saw the party there wiped out to just seven seats after 14 years in power.

Take from that what you will.

Christopher Pyne is counting 22 seats for the Liberals – you need 24 to win in SA. He is basing his count on what his people are reporting from the vote.

Updated

Red-clad volunteers at the event at Thornbury theatre erupted into
cheers at the ABC election analyst Antony Green’s prediction of a Labor win.

They are now handing out party poppers in anticipation of Ged Kearney’s arrival, which is expected imminently. Everyone here sees it as a solid Labor victory, despite nearly 30% of the vote being in pre-poll or postal.

Updated

Labor’s social media team is on it in South Australia.

Updated

#prayforCalla

At least three independents look set to retain their seats in South Australia (not including any SA Best candidates).

The sitting independent Geoff Brock looks set to win a third full term in Frome. The Liberal-turned-independent Troy Bell has a substantial lead in Mount Gambier, while the ex-Labor MP Frances Bedford has a substantial lead in Florey.

The larger the crossbench, the more likely we will end up with a hung parliament, so these results improve the chances we won’t see a clear result.

Updated

Antony Green is predicting a Labor win in Batman (50% of the vote has been counted and Labor is ahead).

Updated

Ben Raue is still crunching the Batman numbers:

Twenty-eight booths have reported two-candidate-preferred votes in Batman and the vote is ticking up slowly for Labor. Their swing is now 0.69%.

I’ve divided up polling booths into three areas: the centre, north and south. The swing to Labor in the south is running at just over 5%, with a swing of 2.6% in the centre. Meanwhile the Greens vote is up 2.5% in the north.

Updated

On the issue of postal votes, Stephen Murray, who really enjoys this kind of thing (and thank goodness he does) crunched the numbers a little earlier:

Updated

Our intrepid Melbourne reporter Calla Wahlquist has headed over to Ged Kearney’s party.

Updated

There are a lot of seats in South Australia yet to be called (some are too close, others just don’t have any data), but it is clear that SA Best won’t be challenging the major parties across a vast swathe of seats.

SA Best is only competing in a handful of seats so far, with Labor and Liberal retaining a substantial number of their safer seats.

The best prospect for SA Best will be to win a handful of crossbench seats. This outcome has become obvious over the last few weeks but it’s worth stating that the actual results confirm this prediction.

Updated

In Hartley, the Liberals are still ahead on 40%, (Vincent Tarzia is the incumbent) and Nick Xenophon is on 25%.

Labor’s candidate, Grace Portolesi, looks like coming second though, if the Greens preferences flow through to her, meaning Tarzia would hold on.

Updated

At the SA Best party function at Palace Nova cinemas in the Adelaide city centre, a few dozen campaign volunteers are watching Nick Xenophon being interviewed by ABC News on the big screen.

There’s plenty of grumbling about the questions – the campaign extras feel the media haven’t been fair on their leading man over the past few weeks and are worried this will torpedo their chances.

All the volunteers who spoke to Guardian Australia had joined the SA Best campaign because they’d been personally helped at some point by Xenophon, from a nurse at the aged-care facility at the centre of the Oakden abuse scandal to someone who’d been helped in a family matter.

A typical example is the Kanmantoo labourer Bryan Cunnington, watching the silver screen with a Coopers pale ale in hand and wearing a luminous orange “Grab a stick and stick it up em” shirt (he also has a spare one in white).

Cunnington been volunteering with Xenophon since the 2007 federal Senate run, because the candidate had helped him find a job when he was unemployed.

“I like Nick because he’s sensible, and working for the people, not the 1%” he says.

Updated

With 169 of South Australia’s 701 booths counted, Labor looks like having won 11 seats, the Liberal party looks like claiming 12 and the crossbench is looking at one seat.

But that is a very early count.

The overall Batman result isn’t shifting. Labor is leading but not by enough to call the seat. But there have been been some remarkable results.

Labor polled over 60% after preferences in Bundoora South in 2016. The result is a perfect tie this year – 513 votes each.

That’s a swing of 10.3%.

Updated

Speaking to Sky, Adam Bandt said he was hearing “a lot of people were caught on the hop and caught out of state”, with turnout an issue for the Greens (as it is for Labor) .

He now says “all going well” this will be the last time he speaks as the only Greens lower house MP.

Updated

Word from the Greens: the party is “still optimistic”.

Word from Labor party: it’s “cautiously optimistic”.

At this stage, Antony Green’s computer is predicting a Labor win, with a slight swing.

Updated

Labor pulling ahead in Batman

Twenty booths have reported preference distributions in Batman and the trend is clear. Labor is up just slightly (the swing is now 0.4%) while defending a 1% margin.

Labor appears to be gaining ground in the centre and south of the seat while losing ground in the north, suggesting an equalisation of support across the seat.

This may suggest that Labor’s Kearney has done a good job at regaining support from the Greens in the south (although the Greens will likely still win a majority there) while the Greens have been effective at building support in the suburban north.

Updated

And from the party:

Updated

A nailbiter in Batman but watch the Northcote vote

It is an absolute heart stopper/cliffhanger/nailbiter in Melbourne. Right now Ged Kearney is pulling ahead of Alex Bhatal – fascinatingly Kearney is doing well in the south of the electorate, which is Greens heartland, and comparatively less well in the north, particularly Reservoir.

Labor will be daring to dream right now but we’ve still got a fair whack of the Northcote vote to come. Two days ago I reported that Labor’s private polling had the contest absolutely neck and neck. Looks like they were right.

Updated

You would have to say that one of the biggest things in Labor’s favour in batman is David Feeney is no longer the candidate. Ged Kearney may have some of the *celebrity* candidate about her, but she also has a proven track record with core Labor values. It is still too early to call but, at this stage, Labor has a fighting chance to hold the seat

Updated

Antony Green is warning us he does not expect to call the South Australian election early tonight.

Batman is coming in faster than South Australia at the moment, where just under 2% of the vote has been counted.

In Melbourne, Ben Raue tells us:

There’s been a few more very good results for Labor in the south of Batman. They are up 7.9% after preferences in Clifton Hill, 4.7% in Collingwood North and 3.6% in Westgarth – all medium-sized southern booths in the Greens heartland. Overall the Labor swing after preferences is sitting on 0.7%.

Updated

Greens volunteers and members at Tallboy and Moose, the hipster pub where Alex Bhathal is holding her election party, are nervously refreshing the AEC website on their phones and sharing photos of vandalised campaign signs, which have been variously attributed to Labor or to “anti-Alex Greens”.

One Greens watcher tells me there will be “a reckoning” within the party if Bhathal is elected to clamp down on dissenting voices. They say there has almost been a “willingness to lose” among some Greens.

Bhathal herself has been dropped off at home after campaigning past 6pm (I have been told it took some effort to usher her into a car) and will not turn up here until the result is known.

Updated

For those looking for the results as they come in, you will find Batman here and South Australia here.

Updated

Quick jump to international politics, because this is important:

Labor tells us they are happy with what is happening in the southern part of the seat. But this is a very fast-moving beast.

Updated

We don’t have much in from South Australia (hence the focus on Batman) but there are a few marginal Liberal seats where Labor is doing quite well and could be on track to gain seats, including:

  • Adelaide – Labor up 5% with 3.9% counted
  • Waite – Labor up almost 10% with 1.7% counted

This would be enough of a swing for Labor to win Adelaide and would leave Waite as a virtual tie.

Updated

Just for the record, the Liberals have said they would not govern with SA Best in the event of a hung parliament.

Labor got across the line in the last state election in 2014 with the support of a couple of independents but we have seen boundary redistributions since then.

The ALP has not ruled out working with the crossbench to stay in government, but you have to ask (and I say this as a Queenslander who saw Labor win an election it really should have lost and then get wiped out at the following election) would you want to?

Silly question, I know.

Updated

We have six booths reporting preferences now. Labor has dropped by over 4% in Reservoir but are gaining small swings in the five other booths.

The overall swing to the Greens sits at 0.55%, short of what they need to win. The trend in those booths doesn’t look good for the Greens but the swings to Labor aren’t big enough to close the door.

Speaking to Sky News, Nick Xenophon said he was trying to “defy political gravity” by running in Hartley, but “that is where I live” so that is where he wanted to run.

As for what will happen if SA Best wins seats but he fails in his own bid?

Don’t write me off just yet, but I will be around to be a mentor, supporter to those who are elected, if I don’t get across the line, but at this stage, I am not conceding anything.

He said he was hoping for a handful of seats in the lower house and between two and four in the upper house.

Updated

With 14.6% of the vote counted, Antony Green’s computer is predicting a Labor win in Batman, but the man himself stresses this will continue to go back and forth for a while.

Updated

Or, as the expert Ben Raue tells us:

The primary vote figures from Batman are all over the place, with Labor gaining a much bigger primary vote swing in the southern booths of Alphington North and Collingwood North.

We will have to wait for the preferences to be distributed to know more.

Updated

So it is very close in Batman at this stage. We are still waiting on results from South Australia but so far in the Melbourne byelection there has been a swing to the Greens in the north and swings to Labor in the south.

This is getting interesting.

Updated

Those booths are starting to pile in for Batman.

Updated

Five booths returning for Batman

So we now have five booths reporting primary votes in Batman, and three booths reporting two-candidate-preferred votes.

Labor’s vote after preferences has dropped 4.4% in Reservoir, and gone up 1.6% in Reservoir West, and has gone up 1.8% in the small booth of Murray in the centre of the seat.

Overall this translates into a swing of 0.88% to the Greens. The Greens need a swing of 1.03%, so it’s extremely close.

Updated

Adam Bandt has taken the stage at Alex Bhathal’s party. Calla Wahlquist is there.

Updated

First three booths for Batman

We’ve now got the first three booths in Batman, including two large booths in the northern suburb of Reservoir (a stronger area for Labor).

There’s a swing of 11% to the Greens in Reservoir, and a swing of 5.8% in Reservoir West.

Labor dropped 3% in Reservoir, and gained 5% in Reservoir West. Far too early to say anything but it suggests the Greens can gain ground in the north. We’ll need to wait for the two-candidate-preferred figures to know more.

This translates into an overall swing of 8.9% to the Greens and 2.2% to Labor.

Updated

Australia’s preferential voting system is always most interesting when there are three candidates with a chance – the order of elimination becomes important, with the third-placed candidate’s preference proving crucial.

An SA Best vote of 16% to 17% (predicted by last night’s polls) would likely see them break into the top two in a handful of seats, at which point it becomes crucial as to how the third-placed party is recommending its preferences.

Labor is recommending preferences to SA Best ahead of the Liberal party in 18 seats, and the reverse in 17 other seats, and is offering both options in Nick Xenophon’s seat of Hartley.

The Liberal party is offering two different tickets in Hartley, but is preferencing SA Best ahead of Labor in every other seat.

Updated

We are starting to get some very early results in for Batman as well.

Updated

As the South Australian votes start to roll in, let’s take the time to throw back to one of the more … well, it sort of defies description … moments of the campaign – Nick Xenophon’s election ad.

Updated

The Australian Conservation Foundation has released some final exit polling for Batman, which found that Adani – or at least stopping the Queensland coalmine – was a major issue for voters.

The sample size was 230 people, which is a small sample, even for a byelection, but it does point to one of the issues Labor has been faced with this campaign and will face at the next federal election.

The ACF polling found 74% of voters opposed the mine, while 56% were influenced in their vote by the issue.

Updated

“You can’t stand up for something unless you are having a fight about something,” says Christopher Pyne on Sky, explaining why Jay Weatherill was so combative against Canberra.

Polls are officially closed in both of the elections we are covering tonight.

It is still too early for results, but they should start coming though soon.

In the meantime, hit us with your predictions – send them through to @amyremeikis while we wait for the comment section to open (it is coming, I promise) and I’ll include some in the blog.

Updated

Last 'Batman' election?

This is almost certainly the last time we’ll be paying attention to voting in a seat named Batman.

The electorate, named after John Batman, looks likely to be renamed in the upcoming Victorian redistribution, with draft recommendations due in the next few weeks.

Most submissions have supported a proposed name change, with most proposals suggesting naming the seat after Simon Wonga, a 19th century Wurundjeri elder.

Updated

Labor has admitted it has an uphill battle to win Batman–despite having held the seat since it was created in 1949.

From inside the Labor tent, we are told that Labor “struggles” in areas where the median house price is over $750,000. Batman has seen a lot of housing price growth over the last couple of decades – you’d be lucky to get much change from $750,000 in most Batman suburbs these days.

And that low voter turnout we were talking about is another issue for Labor, and the Liberals making the decision to not run a candidate in the byelection has also made things more difficult, because that is just more people not turning out out to vote.

And preferences could be important here. There has been a real “teal” trend in inner suburbs popping up across the nation, particularly the east coast, where traditional Liberal voters are turning to the Greens because of environmental concerns. That could lead to the Australian Conservatives, who are running a candidate, seeing their preferences head to the Greens. I know it bucks traditional thinking but we saw it in Queensland and are seeing it more and more as the demographics in inner-city seats change.

During the 2016 general election, Labor saw Liberal preferences flow to it. But where there was no Liberal candidate, like in Northcote in the state byelection, Labor reports the Greens won the preference flow.

In the last decade Labor reports its vote in Batman has dropped, while the Greens have nearly doubled their vote over the same period.

All in all, Labor is not confident.

Updated

But it looks as though Labor isn’t the only party worried about voter turnout in Batman:

Updated

Alex Bhathal's party gets started

The polls have closed for the Batman byelection and Alex Bhathal’s election-night party, at Preston brewpub with terrible acoustics and ferns hanging from the ceiling, is starting to fill up.

Volunteers in green shirts are being strategically arranged behind television journalists preparing to do live crosses and, as I write, another cameraman, who I assume belongs to the Greens, is steadily filming me. This is how the magic happens, people.

Labor folk are gathering about 700 metres down the road, in Thornbury. The party is suggesting there has been a low voter turnout in the southern half of the electorate, which would spell bad news for the Greens. The bulk of their vote comes from south of the Bell Street divide.

Early exit polls conducted by Lonergan Research commissioned by environmental groups tend to disagree, but the last few years have taught us not to rely overmuch on the accuracy of exit polls.

Volunteers at Thornbury primary school, where both Bhathal’s children and those of the state Greens MP Lidia Thorpe, who won the Northcote byelection in November, attend. They say it has been a mixed day. The only one with great success at winning over taciturn voters is Peachy the dog.

Updated

We are a few minutes out from the polls closing in the South Australian election and it is still looking too close to call:

Speaking to Sky, Christopher Pyne said he expects Labor to hold on to Batman.

Labor’s Amanda Rishworth said she thinks it is going to come down to voter turnout.

Byelections traditionally have lower turnout than general elections, because, really, who can be bothered (I’m just stating the general ennui surrounding byelections, not making a personal comment). Especially in a byelection which won’t change the government.

Updated

One of the questions which tripped Nick Xenophon up towards the end of the South Australian campaign was who would lead SA Best if he fell short in Hartley.

He didn’t have an answer. He was also asked how he would pay for the regional infrastructure he promised, a question he answered by pointing to cutting from the biggest government departments. Which, as in most states, are health and education.

So that didn’t go down overly well.

Updated

The Electoral Commission of South Australia has just listed a $25,000 donation to the Liberals made on 8 March from Rudy Gomez’s Cartwheel Resources, the company that wants to build a mine “twice as big as Olympic Dam” at Lake Gairdner national park.

This would be the donation amount both parties refused to specify in this story. As we already knew, Gomez donated $50,000 to Nick Xenophon’s SA Best campaign and is thoroughly fed up with dealing with Labor’s project approval process.

While we’re on donations, the SA branch of the Australian Hotels Association has poured more money into its bid to stop Xenophon’s election, donating a furthter $10,000 to Labor and even chucking $5,000 the way of Advance SA, the party made up of breakways from Xenophon’s political movement.

Updated

Meanwhile, in Adelaide, before the close of polls: Nick Xenophon is likely to lose in Hartley but SA Best could pick up one of two seats. The Liberals think they are on track to get 25 or 26 seats.

Remember Labor needs a positive swing of 3% to stand still.

Updated

Labor’s perceptions from today on the hustings in Melbourne

My feedback from Labor folks who have been handing out in Batman today is turnout is down in the south of the electorate, which is the Greens stronghold within the boundaries. This might be good news from their perspective, or it might just mean a number of people have already voted – we’ll have to wait and see.

In the north of the electorate, there has been some blowback today from Macedonian voters still angry that the ALP distributed campaign materials in Greek.

One of the big questions in this byelection has been what will Liberals do, given that the Liberals attracted 20% of the vote in the 2016 federal election and the party is not running a candidate in this contest.

If the battle between Labor and the Greens is tight, what the Liberals do will make a material difference to the outcome. Do they vote, or do they stay at home? The feedback from polling places is Liberal voters are out and seeking out the Australian Conservatives candidate.
Buckle in.

Updated

Good evening

Welcome to a night of politics.

Not only do we have South Australia deciding the most unpredictable election in recent memory, we also have the good burghers of Batman deciding whether Adam Bandt gets some company on the Greens side of the lower house crossbench.

Both campaigns have been fraught, full of drama and, at least from what the people are telling us, coming down to the wire.

But this is Australian politics, where nothing is certain.

Nick Xenophon has bet his political future on being a state powerbroker, but SA Best, his rebranded party, fumbled in the last few weeks of the campaign and Xenophon himself is no certainty to win the seat of Hartley. Labor have been in power for 16 years, which has been one of the strongest cornerstones of the Liberals’ campaign, as Steven Marshall argued it was beyond time for a change.

Meanwhile, Jay Weatherill has been talking up all of Labor’s successes, including its shift to renewable power sources. Will it be enough? We’ll find out soon enough.

Outside of South Australia, Melbourne has seen the battle of the left, as the Greens and Labor slug it out for the seat of Batman, left vacant by David Feeney’s misplacement of dual citizenship papers.

Ged Kearney’s and Alex Bhathal’s campaign for the seat has almost been the sideshow to party infighting and policy disputes. The polls tell us the Greens are on track for a historic win. There is not long to go to see if those polls are correct.

So join us as we indulge in what looks set to be a night of political upsets. Which is basically like political Christmas to us political livers.

Katharine Murphy is watching all the events and we have Calla Wahlquist, Ben Raue and Max Opray in the field.

Comments will be turned on from 7pm, but you can find me on Twitter in the meantime – @amyremeikis.

Grab your drink of choice, settle in and get ready with the refresh button – polls are about to close.

Updated

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