2022 South Australian state election

2022 South Australian state election

← 2018 19 March 2022 2026 →
All 47 seats in the South Australian House of Assembly 24 seats are needed for a majority 11 (of the 22) seats in the South Australian Legislative Council
Opinion polls
Registered	1,266,719 5.4%
Turnout	1,127,642 (89%) (1.98 pp)
First party Second party   Leader Peter Malinauskas Steven Marshall Party Labor Liberal Leader since 9 April 2018 4 February 2013 Leader's seat Croydon Dunstan Last election 19 seats 25 seats Seats before 19 22 seats Seats won 27 16 Seat change 8 6 Popular vote 436,134 389,218 Percentage 39.97% 35.67% Swing 7.18 2.30 TPP 54.59% 45.41% TPP swing 6.52 6.52
Winning margin by electorate.
Premier before election Steven Marshall Liberal Elected Premier Peter Malinauskas Labor

The 2022 South Australian state election was held on 19 March 2022 to elect members to the 55th Parliament of South Australia. All 47 seats in the House of Assembly (the lower house, whose members were elected at the 2018 election), and half the seats in the Legislative Council (the upper house, last filled at the 2014 election) were up for re-election.

The one-term incumbent minority Liberal government, led by Premier Steven Marshall, was defeated in a landslide by the opposition Labor Party, led by Opposition Leader Peter Malinauskas. Marshall conceded to Malinauskas about three hours after the polls closed.^[1] It is the first time since 1982, and only the fourth time since 1933, that a sitting government in South Australia has been defeated after a single term.

Labor won 27 seats in the lower house, while the Liberals retained 16 seats—with the remaining four seats won by independents.^[2] The new ministry was sworn in two days after the election, and Malinauskas became the state's 47th Premier.^[3]

In the 22-seat upper house where 11 seats were up for election, the result was five Labor, four Liberal, one Green, and one One Nation, for a total of nine Labor government seats, eight Liberal opposition seats, with five crossbenchers—two Green, two SA-Best, and one One Nation.^[4] Consequently, the new Labor government would require an additional three non-government votes to pass legislation;^[5] however, the Liberal upper house President was unexpectedly re-elected to the Presidency, which gave the Labor government nine of 21 seats during votes on the floor, meaning that only an additional two non-government votes are required to pass legislation.^[6][7][8]

Like federal elections, South Australia has compulsory voting, uses full-preference instant-runoff voting for single-member electorates in the lower house, and optional preference single transferable voting in the proportionally represented upper house. The election was conducted by the Electoral Commission of South Australia (ECSA), an independent body answerable to Parliament.