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X-Factor: Nick Xenophon guarantees a complex three-way contest in South Australia

The South Australian election is a three-way contest.

The South Australian election is a three-way contest. Photo: AAP

Thanks to the presence of Nick Xenophon, South Australia’s state election has become a rare thing in Australian politics – a genuine three-way contest.

“We have a government that deserves to lose and an opposition that does not deserve to win,” Mr Xenophon likes to say whenever he’s on the hustings.

The former federal senator’s decision in October to quit Canberra and run for State Parliament – under the banner of new party SA-Best – created the “big unknown” of Saturday’s election, political experts say.

The populist, centrist and outspoken pokies critic is hoping to hold the balance of power in a state where Labor has been in government for the past 16 years.

To do that, he will need to win votes from both the quietly spoken yet combative premier Jay Weatherill and the Liberals’ Steven Marshall.

Mr Marshall is vying for the top job for a second time, having failed to take the reins of government in 2014, despite his party winning the popular vote.

As of Thursday, the bookmakers have Labor as favourites to win an unprecedented fifth term.

Watch our video below for a full rundown

But Dr Rob Manwaring, a political expert at Adelaide’s Flinders University, said Mr Xenophon’s entry into the race made it incredibly difficult to predict.

“The big unknown of the election is how well the SA-Best vote is going to hold up,” he told The New Daily.

“Before he announced that he was going to run in the lower house, the Xenophon ticket was polling roughly 20 per cent in South Australia.

“The decision to run in the lower house led to a massive surge. The infamous December Newspoll had [his] support up at 32 per cent. Since that time it’s been bouncing around all over the shop.”

A March Newspoll had the Liberals ahead on 32 per cent, with Labor two points behind and SA-Best on 21 per cent.

Hung parliament likely

Labor currently holds 23 seats in the 47-seat House of Assembly, and has governed with the support of crossbench MPs and a former Liberal deputy leader who were brought into the ministry.

Unlike Mr Weatherill, the Liberals have ruled out a coalition with SA-Best, though this leaves open the possibility it could still govern with a minority.

Dr Manwaring said a hung parliament was the most likely outcome after Saturday.

“In that case, SA-Best and/or some of the other independents might have a key hand in deciding who forms government,” he said.

“My guess is one of the things we won’t know on election night is who has the most seats.”

In a possible twist, Mr Xenophon, who says SA-Best will serve as a “watchdog in Parliament”, may end up leading the party from outside the chamber, with some polls showing him on track to lose the Liberal-held seat of Hartley, in Adelaide’s east.

Party messages

Mr Weatherill has focused on a message of “jobs, jobs, jobs”, seizing on the state’s burgeoning renewable energy sector and ramping up the rhetoric against the Turnbull government in Canberra.

“I think we’re on the verge of something incredible in SA,” he told a town hall debate this week.

But his administration has faced several scandals in the current term, including the 2016 power blackout, and a damning report into abuse at the Oakden aged-care facility that was released last month.

Mr Marshall told a town hall meeting this week that Labor has had “16 years and they have comprehensively failed”.

Dr Manwaring said the Liberals had run a safe and solid campaign, though Mr Marshall had battled perceptions of being a “weak leader”.

They were disadvantaged by the fact their vote was “disproportionately locked up in rural and remote seats”, he said.

“If it’s a campaign about leadership, then Labor will win.

“If it’s a campaign decided by policy, and policy outcomes, and tiredness, then the Liberals get in.

“That’s a key dynamic that both parties are playing up to.”

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