South Australia state election 2022: Concern for Scott Morrison in stunning rout

Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Flavio Brancaleone

This is a crushing defeat for the Liberal Party that entrenches South Australia as a Labor state in the modern era.

It is an endorsement of Labor’s scare campaign on health – ambulance response times and ramping in particular – but it goes much deeper than that.

It is remarkable that people did not want to vote for a Liberal Party that delivered an extraordinarily successful response to the pandemic when benchmarked against the world.

It underscores the extent to which incumbency may well be a curse rather than an advantage and this will worry Scott Morrison and every other serving leader.

The recriminations will be swift.

As tepid as the Liberal campaign was, there are deep reasons for the refusal of voters to embrace Steven Marshall.

One view is that voters did not believe that Marshall was responsible for the good aspects of the pandemic response.

When it came to opening up, he was smashed for everything that went wrong.

It is important to remember that Peter Malinauskas ran a very good campaign; he always looked like he wanted to be premier.

He brought a sense of Kennedy good looks to the front page of The Advertiser and almost youthful exuberance.

He owned that reopening but took a back seat when things were working.

The Liberal primary vote collapsed straight after the reopening of SA’s borders and never recovered sufficiently to save the government.

Voters clearly trusted him with the keys to government at one of the most crucial times in the state’s history.

It is a big tick for Labor and an even bigger black mark against the political acumen of the Marshall government.