Pauline Hanson's One Nation has seen the fastest polling rise in modern Australian politics. What is going on?
Since the federal election in May last year, One Nation's polling popularity has skyrocketed.
For the first time in its 29-year history, One Nation is polling above 20 per cent nationally and is ahead of the combined vote of the Liberal and National parties.
People who are paid to obsess over poll data in Australia have never seen anything like it.
"I am shocked [by] every poll I see — and I do this for a living," says ANU political scientist Jill Sheppard. "The sheer numbers of people who are telling pollsters they will vote for One Nation is tremendous."
"It's drastic," says Redbridge pollster Kos Samaras. "It's the fastest [rise] I've ever seen."
If the current level of One Nation support — or anything close to it — actually translates into the ballot box, it will wildly reshape Australian politics.
Let us take a look at the latest polling data and see just how different it is from past election results.
[Embed chart]This chart shows federal election results since 2001 and compares them to the latest polling data.
The One Nation line shows the party's Lower House vote has been below 5 per cent for most of its history, climbing to just over 6 per cent last year.
The dotted lines at the end represent the latest polling figures, based on an average compiled by election analyst William Bowe.
As you can see, the One Nation vote leaps to a level never seen before, while the Coalition's drops off drastically.
[ EMBED SLOPE CHART ]If we zoom in a little on that right-hand section of the chart, we can really focus on the shift that has happened since the May 2025 election.
It is worth saying this chart is a little unconventional — the data on the left represents an election result, while the data on the right shows current polling data. They are not like-for-like. So keep that in mind.
But what it brings to life is the titanic shift that is on the minds of nearly every politician in the country right now.
And of course, this is not just about One Nation — the dramatic collapse in Coalition support is the other side of the same coin.
And it is a big part of the story that has now cost Sussan Ley her leadership.
In launching his successful leadership challenge, Angus Taylor said the Liberals were in their worst position since their foundation in 1944.
Kos Samaras says the polls reflect a reckoning that has been coming for some time.
"I've been warning [the Coalition], saying this immigration stuff is gonna kill you, but no, no, they didn't listen. Here we are."
We will have more to say about immigration — and the Coalition too — but first let us touch on a couple of basics. All the usual caveats apply to reading and thinking about political polling…
- Polls are flawed;
- At best, they represent where voters' heads are at right now, rather than how they will vote in the next election, which is still a couple of years away; and
- You should never assume they are accurate down to the precise digit — they are not, especially at this point in the election cycle.
Nonetheless, if you read them carefully and focus on the patterns rather than the percentages, polls are a valuable tool for understanding the current mood of the Australian electorate.
And the current mood suggests voters are sick and tired of the status quo.
Who is One Nation winning over?
The evidence on this front is clear — it is mostly former Coalition voters.
"They are picking up a small portion of Labor voters, but primarily it's a shift amongst Coalition voters," says DemosAU's head of research, George Hasanakos.
[Embed voter intention]Here is what that looks like…
Hasanakos and DemosAU have conducted three separate polls since October last year, and are tracking where the One Nation vote is coming from.
This chart shows the percentage of 2025 voters for each party who have since changed their vote to One Nation.
There is a fair bit of fluctuation between the different poll results, which could be partly due to differences in methodology, but also because this is not a static, settled situation for voters.
For that reason, we are showing the highest and lowest results from across the three polls. This should help us pay attention to the pattern rather than the precise figure.
The lowest estimate is that one in five people who voted for the Coalition in 2025 now say they intend to vote for One Nation.
But according to one of the polls, that figure could even be as high as one in three.
By way of comparison, one in 20 (or at the high end, one in 10) Labor voters are saying they now favour One Nation.
But importantly, there are also signs here of a shift in the Other vote.
It looks like a lot of voters who previously voted for a myriad of independents and smaller parties might currently be coalescing in One Nation's corner.
"There's an element amongst that One Nation cohort now that just wants to burn the place down, turf the two-party system out the door, up-end the system," says Samaras.
The Coalition, already weakened at the last election by independents and Teal candidates seizing traditionally blue-ribbon Liberal seats, now faces an emboldened challenger to its right as well.
"I would say that I think these are voters who were looking for any excuse to not vote Liberal and now they have a viable party and a party that's talking about issues that they're worried about," says Jill Sheppard.
But Sheppard says there is a message for Labor too.
"I think there's a real trap here that the Labor Party takes this for granted, that they don't see this as a message to them too, that they're on the nose."
What else do we know about who is changing their votes?
One of the tools at pollsters' disposal is to look at which broad groups of voters are throwing more of their support behind One Nation.
The 'sweet spot' for the surge is when you put together age, location and a non-university educated background, according to George Hasanakos.
"It's primarily [older] age, primarily people who don't have a university degree, and it's led by people in regional and rural Australia."
[Embed sex chart]Let us step through it one factor at a time, starting with a nice, simple breakdown to understand first — here are current vote intentions for men and for women.
This is based on a large-sample DemosAU poll from October/November. So it is not super recent, but the methodology and sample size mean there is more ability to dig into these kinds of demographic details.
Once again, a little reminder — focus on the pattern rather than assuming the exact percentages are spot on.
What we can see here is that men are slightly more likely to support One Nation than women. It is not a huge difference, but it is there.
[Embed age chart]When we look at age, this is where we start to see some bigger differences.
In particular, older voters are more inclined to support One Nation than younger voters.
By itself, this is not much of a surprise — older voters tend to be more conservative.
But Samaras says the biggest recent shift is among people over 50 who used to vote for the Liberal and National Coalition, but who no longer think the two-party system is working for them.
"A lot of these individuals are Gen X, so they've got teenage kids or young adult kids, and they've got aging parents who in the majority are probably sitting on the pension because they're not wealthy individuals, and they've got a massive mortgage themselves or they're renting and they've got their own health problems and they're living in regions where services are not crash hot.
"They have significant levels of stress, and they have experienced over the last decade or so some level of personal economic decline …
"This group is the group that's actually left the Coalition in very significant numbers."
[embed states]Looking at the data by geography suggests it is time to stop thinking of One Nation as 'a Queensland thing'.
"It's time to look at One Nation as a nationwide party," says DemosAU's George Hasanakos.
[Embed geography chart]It is also not just 'a bush thing'.
Yes, the major shift is being led by rural and regional voters.
Many of these people have experienced a huge decline in their personal economic circumstances, Samaras says.
"Traditional industries have collapsed, particularly in the eastern states, whether it's timber, manufacturing, mining — all of that's contracting."
But One Nation is also becoming more mainstream in metropolitan areas, particularly in the outer suburbs.
"I think we're seeing this One Nation contagion spread right across the country," Samaras says.
[Embed income chart]When it comes to income, One Nation support is strongest among low-income earners — the people who are most likely to have borne the brunt of our country's cost of living crisis.
"These are voters who don't have job security, who haven't been able to afford the housing that they'd hoped for, who are worried about their future," says Sheppard.
"[They] are looking around and thinking, 'well, is this how I want to raise a family?' Probably not. And they've found a party that's talking about that."
But notably, there appears to be strong support among Australia's top earners too, with those making more than $200,000 a year almost as likely to back One Nation as those earning less than $45,000.
Australia's richest woman, Gina Rinehart, has become a high-profile friend and supporter of Pauline Hanson.
And the top end of town appears to be paying attention more broadly, too.
[Embed education chart]Turning now to education, we can see that One Nation's support is highest among people who have not attended university.
Kos Samaras says this is driven by hardship and a loss of agency.
"They're not unintelligent. They are of the view that the political system no longer serves them."
Immigration is core to One Nation's appeal
Polling is not always the best tool for explaining why someone says they will vote a certain way.
Instead, political experts tend to tackle that question with tools like focus groups, and even then, voters themselves cannot always clearly explain precisely how or why they are making their decisions.
But what polls can show us is a hint of which issues are making different groups of voters sit up and pay attention.
And there are definitely some trends worth watching around what One Nation voters say.
[Embed health]In December, Redbridge Accent pollsters asked more than 1,000 Australians to rank which issues were the top three most important to them when choosing how to vote.
Here is the breakdown for health.
We know that health is on the minds of voters.
One in three Australians says they cannot afford surgery, and that statistic rises rapidly in regional Australia and more again among Gen X voters.
But according to this survey, health is not at the front of mind for One Nation voters as it is among other groups.
[Embed housing]Housing is a hot-button topic for many voters, but again, One Nation does not stand out particularly from the pack.
It is most front of mind for Green and Labor voters.
[Embed cost of living]The dominant issue for voters across the whole spectrum is the cost of living.
It is ranked in the top three issues by 75 per cent of voters nationwide.
And One Nation voters are largely in line with the rest.
[Embed immigration]But there is one issue where the One Nation pattern looks very different from the other parties — immigration.
More than half of One Nation voters rank it as a driving force for their vote; that is much higher than for any other group of voters.
Redbridge's Kos Samaras says immigration is entangled with a range of related issues for voters shifting to One Nation.
"Immigration, identity, loss of agency, loss of agency because of those urban elites, loss of agency because of those migrants," he says.
"And there's racism there. It's always there.
"But I would argue that it's the economics, fragility and abandonment that's actually driving a lot of this."
Jill Sheppard says voters do not feel heard by the Coalition or Labor on the topic of immigration.
"There's a real threat here that the major parties allow One Nation all of the oxygen on issues like immigration," she says.
"I think that's a danger, because if the major parties aren't talking about immigration, then more extreme parties will, and the public debate will be a lot worse."
In his first speech as new Liberal leader, Angus Taylor promised a new approach to immigration, saying "numbers have been too high, and standards have been too low".
Many One Nation voters see housing affordability and cost-of-living pressures as directly caused by immigration.
Kurt Sengul, a Macquarie University research fellow in far-right communication, says Pauline Hanson speaks directly to those frustrations.
"And that's really clever, right?" Sengul says.
"Because if you look at the March for Australia, you look at One Nation, their central concern — it has never been around economics — it's around culture.
"They want to stop immigration to preserve Australia's culture, Australia's white culture, but they very cleverly link immigration to people's real concerns around housing, important affordability, rental affordabilities.
"Far-right parties, populist parties, tend to be really good at offering simple answers to complex issues."
Sengul says it is also not a surprise that national security is back on One Nation's agenda following the Bondi attack.
"The last time Hanson sort of had political success was back in 2016 when she returned to politics after 18 years in the political wilderness.
"It was actually after the 2014 Lindt Cafe siege. Then what followed was a year of anti-immigrant, anti-Islam, Reclaim Australia rallies in 2015."
All part of a trend growing globally
Populist parties claim to represent the common person.
And they are becoming more mainstream around the world.
Much like US President Donald Trump and the leader of Reform UK, Nigel Farage, Pauline Hanson prides herself on being someone who is never afraid to say what people are thinking.
"[Voters] are starving for authenticity," Samaras says.
"The reason why internationally right-wing populism is succeeding is because at the epicentre of that is that level of authenticity. And yes, that authenticity for that particular version of politics is attached to outrage and scandal and all that sort of stuff."
One other thing we know about One Nation supporters is that they tend to be much more distrustful than other voters.
[Embed trust]Take a look at this data from the Australian Election Study, conducted after last year's election.
(Stick with us — we promise this is the last chart in the story!)
The study asked voters about whether they trusted politicians to act in the public's best interests.
On this question, One Nation voters show a very different pattern from other party groups — almost three out of every four voters say politicians "usually look after themselves".
Those levels of cynicism stand out, even though trust is decaying across the whole Australian political landscape.
The link between distrust of institutions and changing political support is also part of a global trend.
Kos Samaras says right-wing populist parties are increasingly replacing traditional centre-right parties.
"We can't use history to guide us in this because, of course, we are witnessing something quite different," he says.
"We've never seen these sorts of polling numbers, we probably have not seen this level of distrust towards institutions and established party politics across the Western democracies ever — you'll probably have to go back to the Great Depression just after the First World War.
"It is a well-trodden theory that World War I and the Depression combined created the environment for right-wing populism to emerge, fascism, and I think we're living through a similar transitional period right now."
Will the strong polls for One Nation turn into votes — and seats?
The short answer is that if One Nation's current polling converted into a similar result at the ballot box, it would win seats.
And the shape of its support — more concentrated in specific geographic areas — only makes that more likely.
Pauline Hanson has not been this popular since around the time One Nation was founded in 1997.
The closest thing to this level of support was the Queensland election in 1998; that is the only time One Nation has won more than 20 per cent of the vote at any election — and it won 11 seats.
But it is still two years out from an election, and a lot will happen between now and then to affect the result.
Polls cannot predict the future — natural disasters, foreign crises, scandals, where the Coalition will be at, and whether One Nation can maintain its shine.
One Nation is known as a personality-based party, which means it has been built around the identity of one person and its positions are largely built around the views of that person — Pauline Hanson.
What remains to be seen is whether the party can professionalise, build stronger formal party structures and recruit good candidates — all things that have been issues in the past.
"What happens is that it's really hard to scale because you've just got one person who's used to making all the decisions to run a political party that can seriously contest campaigns," Jill Sheppard says.
"I don't think Pauline Hanson is necessarily used to working with the team, and she has a history of personal grievances with colleagues that attest to that."
Another big unknown is how much of One Nation's current polling is voters expressing their dissatisfaction with the state of the Coalition, as opposed to jumping ship more permanently.
"There's the hypothetical choice, and then there's what happens at the ballot box," George Hasanakos says.
On that front, there are a couple of big tests coming up for both One Nation and the Coalition under new leader Angus Taylor.
The first is the South Australian election on March 21.
Another will be the upcoming by-election in Sussan Ley's vacated federal seat.
About the data
- Reporting: Matt Liddy, Margaret Burin; data visualisation and design: Ben Spraggon; development: Ash Kyd
