Secrets of the unlikely victory

EIGHT days ago, Mike Rann's campaign team received another bout of misery from the party's internal pollsters.

The polls had never been encouraging, but as Labor prepared to enter the final week of a fraught election campaign, the news was particularly alarming. The ALP was tracking behind the Liberals, and the momentum was with the opposition.

Rann's standing had become a drag on the party vote, and some of his closest advisers were losing their nerve. They wanted Rann to tear up his campaign script about low unemployment, strong economic growth and access to the ear of Kevin Rudd. Instead, Rann should respond to the lines being put out by the plain-speaking Opposition Leader, Isobel Redmond.

But Bruce Hawker knew better. This was no time to blink, he told the doubters. The strategy he had led from the start -- based on holding a handful of key marginal metropolitan seats -- was sound.

Hawker's ability to snatch a probable victory for Labor in South Australia despite losing the popular vote is an ominous sign for Tony Abbott and the federal Coalition as they prepare to take on the Prime Minister later this year. Rudd, too, is likely to turn to Hawker's marginal-seat strategy, which helped Labor secure unlikely victories for Morris Iemma in NSW in 2007, Anna Bligh in Queensland last year and now a probable third term for Rann.

On Saturday night, with Labor apparently heading towards a remarkable victory that seemed out of reach just a week earlier, Rann praised Hawker as "the greatest strategist in Australia".

In Sydney's Sky News studios, where he spent the night following and commenting on the dual state elections (he was the first to call Labor's win in South Australia), Hawker beamed.

When the South Australian campaign began last month, Labor knew it was going to be difficult to win a majority of the statewide two-party vote. That meant Labor had to target the key marginal seats, where it could stop the state swing occurring.

Enter Hawker, former chief of staff to Bob Carr in NSW, and a stalwart of Labor campaigning.

He was across the internal polling in the seat-by-seat contests, and he believed the Liberals had problems with some of their marginal seat candidates, such as Trish Draper, a recycled former federal MP from the Howard era.

As others wavered, Hawker advised Rann to stick to his guns and show faith in the quality of his marginal seat campaigns to deliver Labor enough seats to form government.

Any change in the message with a week to go would look as if Labor was panicking and confirm in voters' minds what the Liberals were pushing -- that Labor was all spin and no substance.

"One thing (veteran Labor speechwriter) Graham Freudenberg said to me is that they are called campaigns because they need the discipline of a military campaign," Hawker says.

"You can't just change at the last minute."

On the ground the strategy was simple: don't give up on the most marginal seats just because a swing is on the cards.

Hawker knew the best campaigners in any political party are often the MPs in the most marginal seats.

They constantly have to fight for their political lives. They have the local networks to stave off some of the statewide swing, and most importantly the Liberals would not see the defence of outlying marginals coming.

Given the momentum Redmond was generating, the conservatives became too focused on the seats further up the pendulum that they needed to win to form a government, such as the electorate of Adelaide, which the party won with a 15 per cent swing.

The Liberals didn't do enough to win marginal seats, hoping they would be swept up in a statewide move against the government.

Labor's focus on key marginal seats ensured it held four of its five most marginal -- the electorates of Light, Mawson, Hartley and Newland, where Draper was duly beaten. The party is just in front in the sixth most marginal seat of Bright, but Liberals believe they will win the postal votes.

Before the South Australian election campaign began, federal Labor strategists were worried Rann might not hold on.

After allegations last year that he had an affair with a parliamentary barmaid, the Premier's satisfaction ratings began to tumble. While Rann was known to be a good campaigner, federal Labor was getting worried.

The decision was taken to recommend to Rann that Hawker parachute in to help with strategy.

Hawker spent every day of the South Australian campaign in the state, avoiding the temptation to return east even for a day. He did not want to lose touch with local issues by falling out of the loop.

In the final week, the Liberal campaign faltered. Problems with costings and a show of disloyalty by one-time leadership candidate Vicki Chapman gave the key marginal seat campaigns the added assistance they needed to stave off the Liberal challenges.

Had Labor's campaign shifted ground in response to the Liberal push, Hawker believes it would not have had the gravitas to convince voters to stick with the government, based on its good record.