In just two months, South Australians will be voting for their next state government, and, more likely than not, giving Peter Malinauskas another four years as Premier.

It is nigh-on-impossible to find anyone expressing optimism that the Liberal opposition could win from here, although it must be said that after the eleventh-hour leadership change from Vincent Tarzia to Ashton Hurn in December, conservatives are feeling like their prospects have improved and they might be able to hang onto more seats than they'd been bracing for.

My full guide of all seats for ABC News will be published soon (barring catastrophe, this week), but in the meantime, a sneak peek of the starting line, including the electoral pendulum after the redistribution.

At the March 2022 election, Labor achieved a first preference vote of 40 per cent, 7.2 per cent higher than they’d achieved four years earlier. That first preference swing was boosted by the disappearance of SA Best after it had polled 14.2 per cent in 2018.

Labor won 27 seats in the House of Assembly, with 24 required for majority. The Liberal Party won 16 seats, and four seats were won by independents.

Labor was then able to add to its seat haul by gaining Dunstan when former premier Steven Marshall resigned, and Black, when Marshall's successor as party leader David Speirs left the parliament.

The Liberals lost a vote on the floor with the defection of MacKillop MP Nick McBride to the cross-bench in 2023 (who is contesting this election as an independent while charged with assaulting his wife and under a home detention order).

So that means that, at the end of the parliament, Labor held 29 votes in the House of Assembly, the Liberals had fallen to 13, and there were five independents.

For this election, the Liberal side of the electoral pendulum is complicated by movements on the crossbench.

Mackillop remains notionally Liberal because that's the party that voters chose in 2022. Former Liberal-turned-independent Dan Cregan is retiring at this election and so, based on the two-party-preferred vote in 2022, his seat of Kavel reverts to being notionally Liberal at this election. Likewise, Mount Gambier, which is vacant after the conviction and resignation of independent Troy Bell, is notionally Liberal-held.

After accounting for the redistribution of electoral boundaries and estimating new margins in affected seats, here is the electoral pendulum:

Notes on margins

• Black: Gained by Labor at the by-election caused by former Liberal leader David Speirs’ resignation. The 2022 Liberal margin was 2.7%
• Dunstan: Gained by Labor at a March 2023 by-election after former Premier Stephen Marshall’s resignation. The 2022 Liberal margin was 0.5%.
• Finniss: David Basham will again be challenged by independent Lou Nicholson and so we have taken the 2CP margin from 2022 as the margin for 2026.
• Flinders: Liberal MP Sam Telfer ran a much closer two-candidate preferred race of 3.0% against independent Liz Habermann. Habermann is not contesting this election, and so we are using the 2PP margin from 2022 in this seat.
• Kavel: Independent Dan Cregan is retiring at this election and so this seat is notionally Liberal, with the 2PP margin from 2022.
• MacKillop: Former Liberal Nick McBride is contesting as an independent. This seat is notionally Liberal with the 2PP margin from 2022.
• Mount Gambier: Vacant seat, notionally Liberal-held with the 2PP margin from 2022.
• Ngadjuri: Formerly Frome, significantly redrawn, reducing margin from 8.1 to roughly 3.2.
• Stuart: This seat was significantly redrawn, making the margin estimate more uncertain.