A senior Liberal has expressed private fears about Steven Marshall's chances in Dunstan. Photo: Tony Lewis / InDaily

InDaily has confirmed that a senior former Liberal MP expressed serious concerns about the party’s chances in Marshall’s inner-eastern suburbs seat of Dunstan in a private conversation at a business function yesterday.

A party to the discussion confirmed the “casual conversation” had taken place, in which the veteran campaigner expressed misgivings about “what might happen with preferences”.

“I was shocked to hear that,” the source said.

Much of the fallout of this week’s Advertiser-Galaxy polls centred on Nick Xenophon’s dwindling chances in Hartley, but the numbers also paint a worrying picture for Marshall, despite a fairly healthy primary vote of 44 per cent.


That’s ahead of Labor’s Matthew Loader on 30, SA Best’s Jack Noonan on 15 and the Greens (8) and Dignity Party (3).

Marshall held the seat by a two-party margin of just 3.1 per cent in 2014, having garnered 50 per cent of the primary vote.

This time around Galaxy is predicting a similar margin after preferences, despite Marshall’s primary dipping by six points in this week’s poll of 576 residents.

The disparity is explained by uncertainty over the flow of SA Best preferences, but Labor will expect to garner the vast majority of preference flows from the Greens and Dignity. Interestingly too, Dunstan is one of 15 seats in which the Greens have placed SA Best above the Liberals on their How To Vote cards.

But party strategists insist they are “not concerned” about Marshall’s chances, despite Labor firing a strategic salvo with a commitment to extend the tram network up the Parade.

A senior source told InDaily they were confident the tram had not proved to be “the vote-winner that Labor thinks it is”.

“We don’t have a concern, and haven’t had a concern in relation to Dunstan,” they said, adding that the party “monitored that seat for about five weeks [and] it progressively got better each week”.

“It’s not on our radar as a problem.”

A Labor insider would only say Dunstan was an “outside chance” based on the likelihood of strong preference flows.

InDaily has been told the Opposition conducted tracking polls in 10 seats early this week to assess likely trends.

“The movement this week has been favourable [to us],” an insider said.

That movement, though, is largely “away from Xenophon” rather than from Labor.

Further complicating the equation is the fact polling only gauges primary voting intent, with Xenophon still a chance to garner a disproportionately high number of second preferences.

But while both major parties are benefiting from a purported shift away from SA Best, the source insists “Labor’s not making the progress they would have hoped to make”.

“I’ve been reasonably comfortable about this for a few weeks, and it’s holding as I would hope it was and is,” they said.

“I’ve been in what I consider to be a comfortable zone for a couple of weeks now.”


Labor insiders confirm their own research backs the purported trend that Xenophon is “sinking”, with the prospect of a close tussle for second place in Hartley.

Liberal strategists say they are now confident of picking up three seats from Labor – Newland in the north-east, Henley-based Colton and Elder in the southern suburbs.

They also expect bayside Morphett to return to the Liberal fold, with published polling suggesting former frontbencher-turned-independent Duncan McFetridge faces an uphill battle.

Newland is the nominally the state’s most marginal seat, after the 2016 redistribution shifted it onto the Liberal side of the pendulum.

InDaily has been told the Liberals polled the seat last week.

Asked if they expected to snare the seat, a source said: “I’d be surprised if we didn’t.”

The Liberals began the campaign with 19 seats, so picking up Colton, Elder, Morphett and Newland would put them on the threshold of forming Government, with 24 seats required for an outright majority.

That majority would then be assured with Mount Gambier likely to go to either Liberal candidate Craig Marsh or sympathetic independent Troy Bell.

But SA Best remains the complicating factor, with Xenophon’s preference flows still a chance to wreak havoc in otherwise safe seats.

Despite the widespread expectation that the fledgling party’s support is on the wane, the Liberal source still believes SA Best is “on the hunt in [Labor-held] Giles, and perhaps [Liberal-held] Heysen”, although “I think we’ve been able to claw [that] back”.

Any loss of ground to SA Best will offset the Liberals’ charge towards an outright majority.

After Colton, Elder and Newland, strategists say the party’s next best prospect is Mawson, which is currently “so tight I couldn’t call it”.

Insiders also consider the party an outside chance in north-eastern seats such as King.

Much will depend on whether there is life left in Xenophon’s campaign, and any chance of an eleventh-hour poll resurgence.

“Some of these [seats] are so finely tuned that if 50 people change their mind on Friday it could change the seat,” one source said.

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