Kevin Foley says he is not worried by frontbencher Jay Weatherill’s challenge for the ALP deputy leadership.

Mr Weatherill says there is a need to refresh the party after a backlash against Labor by voters, especially in some of the safest electorates.

The fact that the anti-Labor sentiment was less evident in many marginal seats appears to have ensured Labor a third term in SA.

Premier Mike Rann is backing Mr Foley to stay on as his deputy and says Mr Weatherill’s announcement of a challenge is premature.

Mr Foley, who is also SA Treasurer, is keen to remain in his current roles.

“I know I’ve got faults, I know at times I’ve been too strident in my approach to this job but, you know, this job does require a toughness that a lot of other jobs don’t,” Mr Foley said.

The National Party says the Liberals may have spoiled their chances of achieving government in South Australia by focusing too much effort on ousting Riverland Nationals MP Karlene Maywald.

Ms Maywald, the only Nationals representative in SA, lost the seat of Chaffey to high-profile Liberal Tim Whetstone, who achieved a 20 per cent swing.

Ms Maywald had been in charge of the water portfolio in the Rann Labor Government.

Nationals SA president Jacky Abbott says the outcome in some city seats suggests the Liberals may have themselves to blame for losing on Saturday.

“They put an enormous amount of resources into Chaffey,” she said.

“Now we’re a conservative party, the Nationals in South Australia and everywhere else, but had they poured those resources into city-based seats it might well be that they might be in government.

“As a conservative party we would like to see a conservative party in government, but that was not to be.”

Liberal frontbencher Vickie Chapman conceded on election night that the party may have put some of its campaigning efforts into the wrong areas.

Difficult to recover

Politics lecturer Clem Macintyre says the signs are not good for the future of the National Party now that it has no representation in SA.

“It’ll be difficult for the Nationals to recover from this but I don’t suppose we can say they’re dead and buried yet,” he said.

More optimistic is former Nationals MP Peter Blacker.

“It’s a blow but they will come back. It might be one election period or two election periods before it will happen, but it will happen,” he said.

Mr Blacker says the Nationals recovered from a similar position in the early 1990s.

There are no more votes being counted yet in South Australia, as the city seats of Bright, Hartley and Mitchell remain in some doubt.

The ABC computer suggests Labor will end up with 25 Lower House seats, the Liberals 18 and independents with four.

Electoral Commissioner Kay Mousley says counting will resume on Tuesday.

“I would suggest for the key seats that are very marginal at this point in time we won’t know until we’ve conducted a distribution of preferences and that will happen on Sunday of this coming week,” she said.

ABC election analyst Antony Green says he doubts there is any prospect of the Liberals’ Joe Scalzi taking the seat of Hartley from Labor’s Grace Portolesi.

In the Legislative Council, it appears Labor and the Liberals will win four seats each and the Greens and Family First one each.

The 11th seat is a fight between Dignity For Disability, independent David Winderlich and the Free Australia Party.