“I guess I knew that anything was possible,” Nicholson said.
“Through campaigning for 12 months, I certainly knew that people were unhappy with the sitting member.
“I thinxjmtzywk people were really looking for a bit more recognition of the local issues and a representative that is really paying attention and listening.”
has previously reported that some Liberal branch members had privately confessed on the campaign trail that they would be voting for Nicholson, amid discontent about the state of health services around the Victor Harbor area.
The electorate, which covers the seaside towns Encounter Bay, Goolwa, Port Elliot and Hindmarsh Island, overlaps with the federal seat of Mayo held by Rebekha Sharkie.
Nicholson, an occupational therapist and mother of three, said she is “not counting my chickens before they’ve hatched” but was confident about her grassroots campaign’s pre-poll effort.
“We’ve got a huge amount of votes still to count,” she said.
“We had a strong presence on the pre poll booth and the feel was positive … but we won’t know until the numbers come in.
“I’m happy to have had the privilege of running the campaign and to have had all of the support that I’ve had – I’m stoked to make the seat one that has had a strong challenger.”
The Liberals are facing similar difficulties in Adrian Pederick’s regional seat of Hammond and Peter Treloar’s former seat of Flinders.
The south east seat of Hammond, which takes in the city of Murray Bridge, Strathalbyn and Langhorne Creek, is facing a strong challenge from independent Airlie Keen who is at 49.9 per cent on two party preferred – a nearly 17 per cent swing against Pederick.
“To just put it in perspective, I ran my own campaign … I have a small and dedicated team, but I was my own campaign manager, I self-funded,” Keen said.
“So I’m really proud of my campaign and what I’ve achieved regardless of the outcome.”
Keen, a Murray Bridge councillor and long-time electorate officer in Kavel, said she was “humbled by the enormous support from across the political divide”.
She said her candidacy had pushed the Liberals towards making a $1.5 million commitment for a regional stadium in Murray Bridge and Labor towards a series of new housing commitments in Strathalbyn.
“Hammond has been an ultra-safe Liberal seat for a long time and we are overlooked because of that,” she said.
ABC chief election analyst Antony Green says Pederick will be safe in Hammond if Keen is unable able to beat out Labor candidate Belinda Owens to finish in the top two.
Owens currently has around 600 more first preference votes than Keen with half of the vote yet to be counted.
In Flinders, Liberal candidate and Tumby Bay Mayor Sam Telfer remains locked in a tight contest with independent Liz Habermann, who, according to the Electoral Commission, has 55.8 per cent of the two-party preferred vote.
While Telfer remains the favourite to succeed retiring member Peter Treloar, the Eyre Peninsula and Nullarbor Plains seat has sustained a nearly 20 per cent swing against the Liberals.
Meanwhile in the Upper House, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation is looking the favourite to win a place on the crossbench in their first South Australian election campaign since 2006.
The Queensland-based party has so far won roughly 4.2 per cent of the Upper House vote – beating out a glut of conservative minor parties including the Liberal Democrats (3.5 per cent), the revived Family First Party (3.2 per cent), the rebranded Australian Family Party (0.9 per cent) and the Nationals (0.7 per cent).
Antony Green said One Nation looks the most probable to win the Upper House’s 11th seat.
“At this stage, nine seats are certain: four Labor, four Liberal and one Green,” he told ABC News on Sunday.
“Two seats remain in doubt, I think on the current numbers it’s likely that Labor will win a fifth seat and it looks like the last seat could well go to One Nation who are the highest polling of the smaller parties.”
Sarah Game, the 39-year-old daughter of One Nation’s SA branch director Jenifer Game, is the party’s lead candidate for the seat.
Jenifer Game said the party’s result so far was “quite an achievement” but emphasised that a victory is far from settled yet.
“If she shares the balance of power, then obviously our agenda that we laid out very clearly we would try to put it in place,” she said.
