State elections were held in Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

 on 3 March 1962. All 39 seats in the South Australian House of Assembly

South Australian House of Assembly

The House of Assembly, or lower house, is one of the two chambers of the Parliament of South Australia. The other is the Legislative Council. It sits in Parliament House in the state capital, Adelaide.- Overview :...

 were up for election. The incumbent Liberal and Country League

Liberal and Country League

The Liberal and Country League was a major political party in South Australia throughout its forty year existence. Thirty-four years were spent in government, in part due to the electoral malapportionment known as the Playmander, introduced after coming to power.Created on 9 June 1932 as the...

 led by Premier

Premiers of South Australia

Before the 1890s when there was no formal party system in South Australia, MPs tended to have historical liberal or conservative beliefs. The liberals dominated government from 1893 to 1905 with Labor support, with the conservatives mostly in opposition. Labor took government with the support of...

 of South Australia Thomas Playford IV

Thomas Playford IV

Sir Thomas Playford, GCMG was a South Australian politician. He served continuously as Premier of South Australia from 5 November 1938 to 10 March 1965, the longest term of any elected government leader in the history of Australia. His tenure as premier was marked by a period of population and...

 defeated the Australian Labor Party

Australian Labor Party

The Australian Labor Party is an Australian political party. It has been the governing party of the Commonwealth of Australia since the 2007 federal election. Julia Gillard is the party's federal parliamentary leader and Prime Minister of Australia...

 led by Leader of the Opposition

Leader of the Opposition (South Australia)

The Leader of the Opposition in South Australia is the leader of the largest minority political party or coalition of parties, known as the Opposition, in the House of Assembly of the Parliament of South Australia. By convention, he or she is generally a member of the House of Assembly...

 Frank Walsh

Frank Walsh

Francis Henry "Frank" Walsh was the 34th Premier of South Australia, serving from 10 March 1965 to 1 June 1967.-Early life:One of eight children, Walsh was born into an Irish Catholic family in O'Halloran Hill, South Australia...

.

House of Assembly (IRV

Instant-runoff voting

Instant-runoff voting , also known as preferential voting, the alternative vote and ranked choice voting, is a voting system used to elect one winner. Voters rank candidates in order of preference, and their ballots are counted as one vote for their first choice candidate. If a candidate secures a...

) — Turnout 93.98% (CV

Compulsory voting

Compulsory voting is a system in which electors are obliged to vote in elections or attend a polling place on voting day. If an eligible voter does not attend a polling place, he or she may be subject to punitive measures such as fines, community service, or perhaps imprisonment if fines are unpaid...

) — Informal 2.46%

	Party	Votes	%	Swing	Seats	Change
	Australian Labor Party Australian Labor Party The Australian Labor Party is an Australian political party. It has been the governing party of the Commonwealth of Australia since the 2007 federal election. Julia Gillard is the party's federal parliamentary leader and Prime Minister of Australia...	219,790	53.98	+4.63	19	+2
	Liberal and Country League Liberal and Country League The Liberal and Country League was a major political party in South Australia throughout its forty year existence. Thirty-four years were spent in government, in part due to the electoral malapportionment known as the Playmander, introduced after coming to power.Created on 9 June 1932 as the...	140,507	34.51	-2.44	18	-2
	Democratic Labor Party Democratic Labor Party (historical) The Democratic Labor Party was an Australian political party that existed from 1955 until 1978.-History:The DLP was formed as a result of a split in the Australian Labor Party that began in 1954. The split was between the party's national leadership, under the then party leader Dr H.V...	31,543	7.75	+2.09	0	0
	Independent Independent (politician) In politics, an independent or non-party politician is an individual not affiliated to any political party. Independents may hold a centrist viewpoint between those of major political parties, a viewpoint more extreme than any major party, or they may have a viewpoint based on issues that they do...	12,827	3.15	-2.78	2	0
	Other	2,528	0.62		0	0
	Total	407,195			39
	Liberal and Country League Liberal and Country League The Liberal and Country League was a major political party in South Australia throughout its forty year existence. Thirty-four years were spent in government, in part due to the electoral malapportionment known as the Playmander, introduced after coming to power.Created on 9 June 1932 as the...	WIN	45.70	-4.60	20	0
	Australian Labor Party Australian Labor Party The Australian Labor Party is an Australian political party. It has been the governing party of the Commonwealth of Australia since the 2007 federal election. Julia Gillard is the party's federal parliamentary leader and Prime Minister of Australia...		54.30	+4.60	19	+2

• Six LCL and two ALP seats were won uncontested. The primary vote was counted on seats contested, while the two-party vote was estimated for all seats.

Background

The Playford government, in power since 1937, went into the 1962 elections in a precarious position. At the time the writs were issued

Dropping the writ

Dropping the writ is the informal term for a procedure in some parliamentary government systems, where the head of government goes to the head of state and formally advises him or her to dissolve parliament...

, South Australia was dogged by a massive recession. This led observers to think that Labor would finally have a chance at power. Longtime opposition leader Mick O'Halloran

Mick O'Halloran

Michael Raphael O'Halloran was an Australian Labor Party politician, serving in the Australian Senate and as opposition leader in the Parliament of South Australia....

 had retired in 1960, and Labor was led into the election by former deputy leader Frank Walsh

Frank Walsh

Francis Henry "Frank" Walsh was the 34th Premier of South Australia, serving from 10 March 1965 to 1 June 1967.-Early life:One of eight children, Walsh was born into an Irish Catholic family in O'Halloran Hill, South Australia...

.

In the election, Labor scored 54 percent of the two-party vote to only 46 percent for the LCL. However, due to the Playmander

Playmander

The Playmander was a form of electoral malapportionment in the Australian state of South Australia, in place from 1936 to 1968. It consisted of rural districts enjoying a 2-to-1 advantage in the state parliament, even though they contained less than half of the population, as well as a change from...

--the rural overweighting that had kept the LCL in power for three decades--Labor won only 19 seats, one seat short of a majority. Even with this to consider, speculation was rampant on election night that Playford's long tenure was finally over.

However, Playford refused to concede, instead saying he would wait to see how the two independents in the chamber lined up once the legislature reassembled. They both declared their support for Playford, giving the LCL a bare one-seat majority. Walsh lobbied Governor Edric Bastyan

Edric Bastyan

Lieutenant-General Sir Edric Montague Bastyan, KCMG, KCVO, KBE, CB was Governor of South Australia from 4 April 1961 until 1 June 1968 then Governor of Tasmania from 2 December 1968 until 30 November 1973...

 not to reappoint Playford, to no avail.

The furor over the 1962 election illustrated how distorted the Playmander had become. By this time some two-thirds of the state's population resided in and around Adelaide

Adelaide

Adelaide is the capital city of South Australia and the fifth-largest city in Australia. Adelaide has an estimated population of more than 1.2 million...

, but they only elected one-third of the members of the legislature.