Colton is an electoral district of the House of Assembly in the Australian state of South Australia. It is a 14.2 km² urban electorate on Adelaide's western beaches, taking in the suburbs of Fulham, Fulham Gardens, Grange, Henley Beach, Henley Beach South, Kidman Park as well as parts of Findon, Lockleys and Seaton.
Colton was created in the 1991 electoral distribution as a nominal seat for the Australian Labor Party, replacing the abolished Henley. It was first contested at the 1993 state election, where it was won in a large swing to the Liberal Party by former Adelaide City Council Lord Mayor Steve Condous, recording 57.7% of the two-party preferred vote. This was reduced in 1997 to 51%, and upon Condous' retirement, it was captured by Paul Caica for the ALP with a 5.6% swing.
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 is the only current lower house seat in parliament to have been consistently won by the party that forms government, with only one other seat changing hands from Liberal to Labor when Labor formed government in 2002, the seat of Adelaide, lost to the Liberals in 2010.
| Member | Party | Term | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steve Condous | Liberal | 1993–2002 | |
| Paul Caica | Labor | 2002–present | |
| South Australian state election, 2010: Colton | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
| Labor | Paul Caica | 9,862 | 46.5 | -11.2 | |
| Liberal | Peter Morichovitis | 8,393 | 39.6 | +10.1 | |
| Greens | Jim Douglas | 1,735 | 8.2 | +2.4 | |
| Family First | Denis Power | 754 | 3.6 | -0.7 | |
| Fair Land Tax | Yiannis Stamos | 444 | 2.1 | +2.1 | |
| Total formal votes | 21,188 | 95.4 | |||
| Informal votes | 956 | 4.6 | |||
| Turnout | 22,144 | 94.2 | |||
| Two-candidate preferred result | |||||
| Labor | Paul Caica | 11,432 | 54.0 | -12.1 | |
| Liberal | Peter Morichovitis | 9,756 | 46.0 | +12.1 | |
| Labor hold | Swing | -12.1 | |||
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