Clive Palmer is on a roll ... but should SA voters trust him?

Poll results from the SA seat of Sturt position Clive Palmer as a political kingmaker. Our experts analyse the results and examine his colourful career. Watch the video.

• Exclusive: Full results from The Advertiser’s Sturt opinion poll
• Policy Tracker: Find out what every party is promising
• Palmer unveils his South Australian candidates

In early March, when candidates were revealed for Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party, the headline in the Sunday Mail read “A robot sex expert, a clown and a former soccer player walk into a Party...”.

It sounded like the intro to a bad joke — and today’s polling suggests it could be.

The emergence of Palmer’s United Australia Party as a player in South Australia at the federal election is extraordinary.

The party has not a single candidate with a profile.

Even the robot sex expert, who was a University of Adelaide alumnus and a very strong candidate on paper, has quit — revealing a bunch of secrets, including Mr Palmer’s plan for a South Australian nuclear reactor, as he left.

The bio for the party’s Sturt candidate Hedley Harding says he is the Adelaide-based director of a finance company specialising in funding for the mining, agriculture and aviation sectors.

“He holds an Australia private pilot’s license” and “joined the United Australia Party to put Australia first and make Australia great”, his bio states.

Unfortunately, earlier this month Clive Palmer’s UAP distributed leaflets in Sturt for Suellen Wrightson, who is taking on former prime minister Tony Abbott in the Sydney seat of Warringah.

At the time Mr Harding blamed an overeager volunteer.

But it is the sort of gaffe that takes place when those on the ground have very little to do with the campaign.

When it comes to policy, Mr Palmer confirmed the nuclear reactor plan, but very little else specifically for SA.

Clive Palmer at a pro-Adani coal mine protest in Mackay last Saturday. Picture: Steve Pohlner/AAP

One of Mr Palmer’s biggest policies — which South Australians would be particularly interested in — is on the Murray Darling Basin Plan.

But instead of outlining a way forward to ensure the health of the river system, something that South Australians appear to universally support, Mr Palmer is instead advocating to rip up the plan.

Doing so could be a disaster for South Australia.

Nine out of 100 voters in Sturt have indicated they will give the United Australia Party their first preference vote.

It is impossible not to assume voters are partly being seduced by the bright yellow billboards and television and newspaper advertisement backgrounds that have flooded this election campaign.

But it is equally impossible to ignore the lure of the protest vote — a middle finger to the two major parties, one led by a man they don’t trust and another led by a party that appears to have spent a good part of the past 12 months fighting with each other.

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As the polling shows, the Nick Xenophon Team (now Centre Alliance) polled 20 per cent at the 2016 federal election.

But Centre Alliance is not running a candidate in the seat at this election, leaving the door open for another party to fill the protest vote void.

However, like Mr Xenophon found out the hard way before last year’s state election, polling success can quickly turn to policy scrutiny.

And if Mr Palmer and his team are set to become a major player in the election campaign that clearly need to do more than bombard the airwaves, news pages and television screens with motherhood statements.