Rex Jory predicts how the 2018 SA election will play out

FEW are prepared to do it, but Rex Jory is going to — predict how SA’s closest election so far will play out. Here’s what he thinks may happen, and who’s most likely to be in power after March.

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IN precisely two weeks from today, the votes from the March 17 state election will be in. In a normal election, the result would be clear, the government-elect waiting for the formalities. Not this election.

So far, no one has been game enough to put their reputation on the line and predict the result. Why?

Because no one, not the bookies, the pollsters, the politicians or the commentators has a clue. SA Best Leader Nick Xenophon said only a fool or a liar would claim to know the outcome.

My guess is we won’t have a clue on March 19.

It’s possible, indeed likely, that one of the major parties will eventually go to Governor Hieu Van Le wanting to form a government in partnership with SA Best members or two or three independents.

But ultimately the next government may be decided sometime next month with a vote of no confidence in the House of Assembly.

Premier Jay Weatherill, Liberal leader Steven Marshall and SA Best leader Nick Xenophon wear coloured hats after the social issues debate during the election campaign. Picture: AAP / Kelly Barnes

SA could spend weeks in damaging political limbo.

Assuming SA Best wins some seats, how can Mr Xenophon (if he wins his target seat of Hartley) force his members to side with either Liberal or Labor when he has discards from both parties in his ranks? It would be easier for him to avoid internal upheaval and let Parliament decide.

Either way, a coalition between one of the major parties, SA Best and a couple of independents would be unstable, opportunist and unreliable.

It would be a short-term compromise doomed to end in tears and, who knows, another election.

And what happens if SA Best gets, let’s say, three members but Xenophon fails in Hartley? SA Best would shatter into a small group of leaderless independents.

For SA, that would be a disaster.

I’m tipping that under some unsatisfactory arrangement the Liberals will take the reins of power.

A boundary redistribution ironed out a 52-48 per cent bias in the vote, which favoured Labor. For a lot of people 16 years of Labor governments is enough. Time’s up.

But what happens if the Liberals win most seats and their leader, Steven Marshall, is beaten in his marginal seat of Dunstan (formerly Norwood) by either Labor or SA Best?

There’s no logical alternative. The Liberals can hardly form government without a leader?

Labor is unpopular. Power, health and hospitals, the Oakden scandal, education, water, aged care, unemployment and elements of public transport are all a mess. The business community is at best suspicious of Labor. Its primary vote in the polls is around 27 per cent but the Liberals are doing little better.

Neither major party could win a conventional election. But this is not a conventional election. SA Best is also polling in that region.

The SA Best vote will slip back. It may even collapse in the same way Pauline Hanson failed in Queensland.

There is a Donald Trump mood in the electorate but many Labor and Liberal voters flirting with SA Best will drift back to their base. SA Best doesn’t have the funds or the foot soldiers to letter box, door knock, put up posters or distribute how-to-vote cards.

It is unlikely but possible SA Best won’t win a seat.

Labor’s 27 per cent primary vote will grow because so many people depend on government for their existence — public servants, academics, welfare recipients, government board members and low-income earners.

In addition, social media will damage SA Best in the final two weeks.

The prospect of another four years of Labor will tempt many people to vote Liberal, some for the first time. The It’s Time factor, more than anything else, could help the Liberals squeeze across the line.

The final two weeks of the campaign will be concentrated on a fault line of metropolitan seats running east-west across Adelaide — Morialta, Newland, Hartley, Torrens, Dunstan, Adelaide, West Torrens, Colton and Morphett. Whoever wins those governs.

But who knows where the SA Best preferences will go? SA Best preferences, not seats, could ultimately decide the result.

Liberals, just.