Electoral district of Colton

Colton South Australia—House of Assembly
Map of Adelaide, South Australia with the electoral district of Colton highlighted Electoral district of Colton (green) in the Greater Adelaide area
State	South Australia
Created	1993
MP	Paul Caica
Party	Australian Labor Party (SA)
Namesake	Mary Colton
Electors	25,512 (2014)
Area	15.5 km2 (6.0 sq mi)
Demographic	Metropolitan
Coordinates

Colton is an electoral district of the House of Assembly in the Australian state of South Australia. It is a 15.5 km² urban electorate on Adelaide's western beaches, taking in the suburbs of Fulham, Fulham Gardens, Henley Beach, Henley Beach South, Kidman Park as well as parts of Grange, Lockleys and Seaton.

The electoral district is named after Mary Colton, who arrived in Adelaide in 1839 and worked for the welfare of women and children. She was the President of the Women's Suffrage League, and lived to see the introduction of equal voting rights for women in 1894.

Colton was created to replace the abolished seat of Henley Beach in the 1991 electoral distribution as a marginal Liberal seat. It was first contested at the 1993 election, where it was won in a large swing to the Liberals by former Adelaide City Council Lord Mayor Steve Condous, recording a 60.5 percent two-party vote from a 9.5 percent two-party swing. This was reduced at the 1997 election to 54 percent, and upon Condous' retirement at the 2002 election, it was won by Paul Caica for Labor with a 54.6 percent two-party vote, which increased to 66.3 percent at the 2006 election. This was reduced to 54 percent at the 2010 election and 51.5 percent at the 2014 election.

Colton could be considered South Australia's state bellwether seat as it is the only current lower house seat in parliament to have been consistently won by the party to form government. Only Colton and Adelaide changed from Liberal to Labor at the 2002 election when Labor won government from the Liberals, with Adelaide won by the Liberals in 2010. On 2014 election results and a uniform swing, Colton would have been the Liberal's 24th seat to form majority government. The previous, abolished seat of Henley Beach was also won by the government of the day since its creation at the 1970 election. Colton/Henley Beach as the bellwether for decades of elections also concurrently decided the election in the one-seat majority outcomes of 1975, 1989, 2002 and 2014.

Members for Colton

Member		Party	Term
	Steve Condous	Liberal	1993–2002
	Paul Caica	Labor	2002–present

Election results

Main article: Electoral results for the district of Colton

South Australian state election, 2014: Colton

Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Labor	Paul Caica	10,394	44.8	−1.5
	Liberal	Joe Barry	10,363	44.7	+4.7
	Greens	Andrew Payne	1,584	6.8	−1.4
	Family First	Kym McKay	859	3.7	+0.2
Total formal votes			23,200	97.3	+1.0
Informal votes			656	2.7	−1.0
Turnout			23,856	93.5	−0.1
Two-party-preferred result
	Labor	Paul Caica	11,938	51.5	−2.2
	Liberal	Joe Barry	11,262	48.5	+2.2
	Labor hold		Swing	−2.2

References

• ABC profile for Colton: 2014
• ECSA profile for Colton: 2014
• Poll Bludger profile for Colton: 2014