South Australian election on Saturday the 18th of March.
The ABC's electoral analyst, Antony Green, can't be beaten. Here are his views:
While Mike Rann's Labor government looks set to be returned with an increased majority at the 2006 election, it is worth remembering how perilously close Rann came to missing out on ever serving as Premier of South Australia.
The tables below show the results of the 2002 election, when the Labor Party fell one seat short of obtaining a majority in its own right. Labor had three more seats than the Liberal Party, but the balance of power lay with four cross bench members. Of those four, one was a National Party MP (Karlene Maywald), two were former Liberal MPs who had won re-election as Independents (Bob Such, Peter Lewis), and the fourth an Independent elected after missing out on Liberal Party pre-selection (Rory McEwen). To become Premier, Mike Rann needed to find one extra vote from amongst this unpromising material.
The surprise solution Rann produced was an agreement with Peter Lewis, the most conservative of the four and a man who had served as a loyal though at times idiosyncratic Liberal MP for more than two decades. It was a remarkable deal, but one that has receded from memory as Rann's dominance of state politics has grown. Since 2002, both Maywald and McEwen have been lured into the cabinet, and when Lewis eventually outlived his usefulness, Such took on his role as Speaker.
Given Labor had three more seats than the Liberals, it was not surprising that one of the four cross benchers would see an advantage in putting Labor in office. In the outgoing parliament, the Liberal Party had more seats than Labor but no permanent majority. In a worse position after the election, the Kerin government could have staggered on, but at some point would probably have been defeated, and under the fixed term parliament rules, produced a 'baton change' to a Labor administration. But had Kerin survived the immediate election aftermath, then Rann would have been unlikely to retain the Labor leadership given his party's indifferent election result. Rann may dominate state politics today, but chances of him ever being Premier were on a knife edge in the weeks following the 2002 election.
There is tonnes more, which can be found at
http://abc.net.au/elections/sa/2006/guide/summary.htm