a redistribution following the 1990 election shifted the fleurieu peninsula and kangaroo island to barker, where they had been prior to the creation of mayo. while this made mayo an exclusively hills based seat, the liberal margin dropped 2 percent to a notionally fairly safe 9.6 two-party margin. it was won at the next two elections on safe margins. at the 1998 election however, high-profile democrats candidate john schumann polled a primary vote of 22.4 per cent. he ended up with a two-candidate vote of 48.3 per cent, just 1.7 per cent (3,000 votes) short of taking the seat, making mayo a marginal seat for the first time. however, on "traditional" two-party terms, it only edged from safe to fairly safe liberal.