The Electoral Commission of South Australia (ECSA) started counting early and postal votes on Monday afternoon, with its website saying that more than half of the declaration votes counted were for Liberal candidate Anna Finizio.

The Liberal candidate maintains the largest share of total first preference votes in Dunstan at 42 per cent, but when preferences are taken into account Labor’s O’Hanlon maintains a lead of 644 votes.

ECSA resumed counting declaration ballots at 9am this morning. No party is yet to make a formal declaration of victory in Dunstan, but on Saturday night Liberal leader David Speirs said the result “was not looking that promising” for his party.

Of the 2467 formal declaration votes, Finizio was the first preference of 52.3 per cent of voters (1290 votes). O’Hanlon has 31.2 per cent of the first preference share for declaration votes, while Greens candidate Katie McCusker managed to secure 10.7 per cent of first preference early and postal votes.

On a two-candidate preferred basis accounting for preferences, Finizio leads with 57.7 per cent of the early and postal vote count, and O’Hanlon has 42.3 per cent.

InDaily approached both the Labor and Liberal parties for comment, and both said they were awaiting the final result before making any statement.

O’Hanlon still leads overall in the by-election for the state’s most marginal seat which which went up for grabs when former state Premier Steven Marshall resigned earlier this year after serving 14 years.

Yesterday, Opposition Leader David Speirs declared he would not step down as leader of the state Liberal party.

“I’ll be staying in this job,” he told ABC Radio Adelaide.

“I canvassed many of my colleagues over the last 48 hours since what is clearly not a good result in the Dunstan by-election for our party, and my colleagues were firmly in support of me continuing in this role.”