Despite denials, I find it hard to believe that this week’s split in the Coalition doesn’t stem from the reported surge in support for One Nation. Perhaps this week is not all about One Nation, but what has been building for months is about One Nation.
Voting intentions in this week’s Newspoll recorded One Nation on 22% of the national vote, for the first time polling ahead of the Coalition on 21%. Labor’s support slipped to 32% with the Greens on 12% and Others 13%.
Similar results from lesser known pollsters released since the start of January were dismissed. But when Newspoll starts reporting a surge in One Nation support, it gets more attention from the political classes.
Newspoll also reported a two-party preferred figure of Labor 55% to the Coalition 45%. But does a national two-party preferred figure make sense when primary vote support on the conservative side is so fractured?
The 2025 election saw a record 35 seats finish with a contest that was not a traditional Labor-Coalition race. If the Newspoll figure were repeated at a general election, the number of non-traditional contests would shoot through the roof.
And everything we know from past elections tells us that One Nation’s support is strongest outside the nation’s capital cities, precisely where the Coalition’s remaining representation is concentrated after last year’s defeat. One Nation is now polling strongly enough to eat further into Coalition representation, particular National Party representation.
If One Nation is polling 22% in national polls, there are electorates across rural and regional areas where One Nation will be polling above 35%, that is leading on primary votes. The debate about One Nation preferences starts to become irrelevant if the party is topping the poll. We would be back to the 1998 and 2001 Queensland elections when Labor preferences were required to save some of the National Party’s safest seats.
The rise in One Nation support could hurt Labor in some of its own seats, but the record of elections over several decades is that whenever One Nation support surges, it tends to hurt the Coalition. It is too early to make predictions for the next election, but if the trend in this week’s Newspoll continues, Labor could be comfortably re-elected with the biggest change being the Coalition losing seats to One Nation.
Despite endless tweets on X about abolishing preferential voting, the split of support between the Coalition and One Nation suggests that there will be no moves away from the Coalition supporting full preferential voting.
In this post I’m going to dig back to the only election where One Nation polled above 20%, the 1998 Queensland election. I’ll look at where One Nation support was strongest, which opponent the party’s rise hurt most, and how an election with One Nation above 20% produced the least uniform electoral swing in Australian history.
The 1998 Queensland Election
A few weeks ago I published a post based on background notes I prepared for a radio interview on the re-emergence of One Nation. I won’t repeat that history in this post, just concentrate on the party’s breakthrough first election in Queensland in 1998. Where did it get its support, what did preferences look like, and is this still relevant 28 years later?
In 1995 the Goss Labor government suffered a near defeat and eventually lost office in February 1996 after the court ordered Mundingburra supplementary election. The Coalition led by new Premier Rob Borbidge took office and governed through to the state election in June 1998.
That election produced a remarkable result. Labor polled 38.9%, the Coalition 32.2% and One Nation 22.7%. No two-party preferred count was undertaken as the election disintegrated into a patchwork of different electoral contests determined by who finished third. (I have combined the separate Liberal and National votes into a single total above as the two parties did not compete against each other at the election.)
Too often the talk about One Nation has devolved into debate on how the party’s preferences will flow. Will One Nation attract Labor voters who would then preference the Coalition? Defending the Queensland Coalition’s decision to recommend preferences for One Nation in 1998, then Nationals Senator Bill O’Chee accused the media of beating the issue up and asserted that Liberal and National Party preferences would not be distributed.
How wrong he was. And he lost his Queensland Senate seat to One Nation at the Federal election several months later.
The chart below shows the total seats where One Nation polled in the band of percentage votes shown on the left. The colour coding shows the number of seats categorised by which party held seats before the election.
One Nation contested 78 ofthe state’s 89 seats and polled more than 20% of the vote in 27 of the 29 National held seats. It also polled above 20% in 26 of 40 Labor seats.
Significantly, most of the Labor seats where One Nation support was high were in regional areas, apart from a cluster around Ipswich and Caboolture. Most of the high One Nation vote Labor seats were in regional areas and contested by National rather than Liberal candidates.
In short the rise of One Nation damaged the Nationals more than any other party, both in seats the party held and in seats the party was trying to gain from Labor. Every election since where One Nation support has surged resulted in problems for the National Party more than the Liberals or Labor.
Along with losing four regional city seats, Labor was damaged in a cluster of seats around Ipswich and Caboolture and lost six seats overall to One Nation. But going the other way, Labor gained six seats from the Liberals, One Nation gained five from the Nationals, and a sixth National seat was lost to an Independent. Labor finished one seat short of a majority, the Coalition 13 seats short. With the only alternative a ramshackle coalition of National, Liberal and One Nation, the two conservative Independents backed Labor to form government.
And it has to be noted, all 11 elected One Nation members had split with the party within two years. The beginning of a pattern that has continued since.
One Nation polled 22.7% state-wide, 18.2% in south-east Queensland, 29.8% in the rest of the state, only just short of 33.4% for Labor and 30.7% for the Coalition. One Nation polled 37.4% in the Wide Bay-Burnett region, 10% more than the Nationals, 31.8% in rural southern Queensland, and 30.2% in north Queensland. One Nation polled 29.5% in National held seats, 21.4% in Labor held seats and 15.1% in Liberal seats.
Of the 89 Queensland seats in 1998, 53 finished as Labor versus Coalition contests, 22 as Labor versus One Nation, and 12 as National versus One Nation. There were also two Independent contests.
The election was a patchwork of differential swings determined by who finished third. In Labor-Coalition contests the swing was 4.6% to Labor. In the Labor-One Nation contests the swing was 3.0% against Labor. And in the National-One Nation contests, the swing was 16.2% against the National Party.
The Nationals only retained the traditionally safe seats of Burnett, Charters Towers, Crows Nest, Gympie and Mirani on the preferences of third placed Labor candidates. In two other National held regional seats, Mulgrave and Burdekin, the party slipped to third and delivered the seats to One Nation on preferences.
The table below shows widely different preference flows produced by who finished third. Note there is an exhausted column shown as optional preferential voting was in use.
| % Preferences to | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Contest Type (Seats) | Labor | Coalition | One Nation | Exhausted |
| ALP-LIB, ONP preferences (29) | 23.7 | 47.3 | .. | 29.0 |
| ALP-NAT, ONP preferences (15) | 18.7 | 50.3 | .. | 31.0 |
| ALP-ONP, LIB preferences (8) | 22.6 | .. | 52.2 | 25.2 |
| ALP-ONP, NAT preferences (14) | 19.1 | .. | 60.8 | 20.1 |
| NAT-ONP, ALP preferences (12) | .. | 46.2 | 17.9 | 35.9 |
After this result, the Coalition promised to recommend preferences away from One Nation. Initially the promise was to put One Nation last, though this became hard to do over the years as the number of candidates contesting elections increased. It was only at the last two federal elections that the Coalition began to put One Nation ahead of Labor, a growing familiarity between the parties that has played a part in the increasing flow of One Nation preferences to the Coalition.
But I’ll come back to questions about One Nation and Coalition preferences in a future post.
The point I want to make here is about the electoral earthquake that will be produced at the next Federal election if One Nation approach 20% of the vote.
As in Queensland in 1998, it may cost Labor some seats at the margin through preferences. But it would do much more damage to the Coalition, especially the National Party, because of a re-arrangement of first preference support on the non-Labor side of politics.
If One Nation poll anything like 20%, it damages the Coalition badly given how few seats the Liberal Party have left in the nation’s state capitals.
I find it very hard view growing disputes in the Coalition through any prism other than the spectre of One Nation haunting rural and regional Australia.
How does this change if David Crisafulli makes good on his promise to change Queensland’s system back to optional preferential voting? Can only imagine it lowers the primary required for One Nation?
COMMENT: He seems in little rush to implement the policy. The LNP support of optional preferential voting has been a strategic punt on weakening Green preference flows to Labor. It looks less attractive if it would also weaken One Nation flows to the LNP.
Thanks Antony, assume that OPV would also weaken prospective Labor preferences to LNP incumbents fending off One Nation?
Any change by the Qld government will be State only and not impact a Federal election.
A Victorian here. I’m absolutely staggered at how many votes in NSW and Qld effectively don’t count because of exhaustion. Why on earth would you allow that to happen to your vote? I can only conclude that it’s poor understanding of the system combined to a lesser extent dissatisfaction with the majors.
Anyway, it the Libs have any brains they will stay away from the Nats and snatch a few seats from them. ON may take a few as well which could see the Nats disappear quite quickly.
Love your analysis Anthony!
As the Liberals are now Teal heavy and Labor lite, what would poles likely be with a coalition of Nationals and One Nation who are far more politically attuned
I would argue that the opposite is true of the Liberal Party. They have lost a lot of their more centrist members to teals, leaving mainly right wingers.
I agree. I live in a teal area. The Teals are winning in our area because the Libs went too far to the right and disrespected education, science, and engineering. One Nation is similar.
Educated people really don’t like to vote for parties that sound looney to them.
Probably a moot point, as PHON would probably be taking away those Nationals seats in the first place, so net gain of RW seats would not be high enough to enable such a pairing.
But a Lib Nat PHON coalition…???
That’s scary….
Did Barnaby see the writing on the wall then or is it just luck that he found himself in ON after getting shafted from the Nats? Regardless of his personal issues politically he is still a popular force it seems so did the Nats shoot themselves in the foot by forcing him out?
Barnaby didn’t get shafted – he was the author of his own demise. Barnaby cares about Barnaby – he sees a better chance at being leader in One Nation and potentially causing trouble for his enemies in the Nats.
What if one nation and the nationals join to form a coalition!
COMMENT: Not much. Neither party has ever shown much ability to win urban seats and urban seats are where government is decided.
That plus One Nation (and to a lesser extent the Nats) polls poorly among voters <45. As long as Labor retains most of its base it will win on preferences from younger voters. Unless there is a split on the left like this the right will struggle to win national elections going forward. We could end up with a situation where the Liberal party effectively become the Teals, and the Nats and On duke it out for everything else outside of the cities. How you form government from that is anyone's guess.
Thanks for this Antony. Could you explain what the numbers would likely look like if the Nats formed a coalition with ON?
COMMENT: In total the same as now. One Nation largely compete for seats the Nationals hold so a Coalition implies what, the Nationals stand aside in seats?
Thank you legend! How does this surge compare to previous elections? Does PHON polling rise or drop the closer you get to an election?
COMMENT: I’ve never seen One Nation preform like this in regular polls. Even in Queensland in 1998 the surge was very late. Whether it is a real rating that can continue only time will tell.
I expect the Libs to replace Ley and the Nats will be back in the Coalition at some stage.
I suspect you are right about that. It will however cost the Libs all their remaining urban seats. It will make it blatantly obvious that the National tail is waving the Liberal dog. City people don’t want to vote for the Nats.
Thank you, Antony for your erudite and detailed analysis based on a detailed understanding of history!
Thanks Antony. The Coalition already have fewer than half as many seats as Labor in the House. It’s extraordinary that after two election results where they’ve gone backwards, if current polls persist, they will likely go backwards yet again at the next election. Hard to see the shift to One Nation doing Labor much damage so long as Labor’s primary vote holds up ~35% or am I missing something?
No Luke if the next election was held tomorrow I would expect Labor to keep at least 90 seats. There are a few marginal Labor seats historically working class whites or old industrial areas that could flip on preferences but the number is so small that it wouldn’t deny them a majority. That said, the possibility exists of a number of seats with three corner races or even four corner races where you could have surprise winners on preferences with very small primary margins. Labor is losing primary votes but for different reasons than the Liberals. Most of the primary vote losses with Labor are younger voters that are not aligned and may vote for other parties but will preference Labor against anyone from the right. Labor is doing enough right now (like HECS debt) to keep younger voters in the fold in the end. I have a hard time identifying a significant enough of an issue on the left that could cause a split with Labor in the same way as is occuring with the Liberals-Nats-ON. Someday that may occur but it won’t be for a while.
The demographics has changed a bit since then, and it’d be even worse for the Nationals, and I’d suggest the Liberals. Ipswich supported ON because it was fresh from being the home for ON. 30 years have passed since then, and it’s no longer so. ON’s supporter base now is going up the coast.
But the fact is, ON’s rise in popularity is partly due to the Liberals having a leader who’s doing poorly. Replace her, and ON support will weaken, especially if the Liberals relearn what their bread & butter is, which is economics & the like.
Fantastic reading, love the facts you presented, I have said all along the Nationals are deeply concerned with the rise of One Nation, it will affect there base vote, Guns, Immigration ext are part of One Nation” policy “ and the Nationals must talk, act, be seen the same as On Nation and let this become there DNA.
Peerless analysis as always, Anthony. My own research suggests that even if elected to Parliament, PHON tend not be a very stable group. Of the 43 PHON candidates successful elected to Federal / State Parliament since 1998, 25 or 58% quit the party during their term in office. This proportion is much higher at a State level with 22 out of 31 (71%) of MPs qutting the party.
COMMENT: I previously listed ne Nation departees in this post.
And the Teal vote? Gone? Who are we?
COMMENT: The ‘teal’ vote stays where it is I presume. This was a post about problems the Liberal and National Parties face in regional areas in contests with One Nation.
I would imagine that in addition to One Nation gaining seats that there would be more teal independents elected as well given how low the Liberal primary vote is at this point. I also think with Labor losing a little support as well that there would be a potential for Greens gains in Wills, Melbourne, and potentially even Richmond as well.
Thankyou Antony – A totally unbiased summation of the state of politics in Australia – however I would really like to see the Coalition numbers separated into Liberal and National and CLP (in Qld) – then we will be able to see how fractured the “right” of politics has become in Australia – perhaps we have come to a “Menzies” moment again.
COMMENT: I don’t see why. Of the 150 seats, 143 were contested by only one representative of the Coalition. There were seven seats contested by both the Liberal and National parties, all won by the Liberal Party of which only Bendigo was truly competitive between the two parties. The Coalition vote was 31.4% in seats with only a single Coalition candidate, 0.4% in seats with more than one Coalition candidate.
the nats only contest regional seats. the Nats and Liberals have a standing “handshake” agreement that they do not contest seats in which there is a sitting coalition member. That said there were seats the Nats should give the Libs a shot at given there is FPV and obvious preferences. Liberals should be contesting Hunter and Richmond. The Nats wont win Richmond again. its too urbanized. that said the nats can still contest it. Nats wont win a contest vs Labor. if the greens make the 2cp the coalition is a chance.
the Hastie train is coming Leys days are numbered
cuurently the 21 seats predicted for One Nation i think they can realistically win 7. maybe 8. the high primary would be concentrated in key areas and labor and the greens would do the damndest to ensure they didnt win any LIB v ONP contests
COMMENT: I’m not aware of 21 seats predicted to be won by One Nation.
IMO, after Bondi, and the new speech laws people aren’t factoring in that “visceral” reaction, that I believe is going to be very apparent at the next federal election.
In Europe, the rise of new right-wing parties has often led traditional conservative parties to align with them in order to form government.
I’m interested in whether a similar scenario could emerge in Australia. If One Nation continues polling at these levels, it seems plausible that the Liberals and Nationals could formally or informally align with them to prevent a Labor–Greens government.
Assuming Labor and the Greens would also coordinate to counter this, the key question becomes: which bloc would actually win — a united right-of-centre alliance (lib/Nat/ON) or a left-of-centre alliance (lab, gre)?
Given current polling trends, is a conservative alliance more likely to form government, or would a Labor–Greens alignment still prevail?
COMMENT: I don’t think your first statement is correct. In countries like Germany, Sweden, Denmark and Norway, mainstream right parties have avoided forming government with the new right-wing parties. France also tries to keep the populist right out of office. And where new right parties have formed government with established conservative parties, such as Austria and the Netherlands, the experiments have not gone particularly well.
The problem for the former Coalition parties with the rise of One Nation comes down to preferences. I doubt the three parties can come to any form of coalition agreement for the same reason Labor and the Greens haven’t. The parties are in competition. The question is whether the former Coalition parties can compete vigorously with One Nation without inducing leakage of preferences. Voters for Labor and the Greens happily preference the other party, but traditionally preference flows between the Coalition and One Nation have been weaker in both directions.
The Nats/ON might be able to achieve reasonable high preference flow adherence in Regional and Rural seats but I suspect that the will leak a lot in urban areas. In many cases in the Regional and Rural seats, like in the case of Barnaby Joyce, you are not really gaining new voters just swapping party labels. As it has been pointed out, government is won or lost in the urban areas and until either the Nats or ON can put something up on offer that appeals to what are essentially historic Liberal voters we are just going around in a circle. Unlike in the UK where Labour is having a moment of their own, Labor seems to be doing well with their voters and, while the have fallen in primary votes, do well in preferences. Either Labor needs to lose significant amounts of left voters to the Greens (or someone else) or lose significant amounts of centre voters to Teals or the Liberals the current balance of seats probably won’t change a lot. Just the party names will.
This is not a reply to Brett’s post but to the comment that has been published: the mainstream right in Norway was delighted to form a coalition government with the populist, hard-right Progress (?) Party from 2013-2021. In Sweden they are happy to have the so-called Sweden Democrats (??) as a faithful partner in a shameful confidence and supply arrangement signed nearly 4 years ago. Same thing in Denmark with the Danish People’s (??) Party between 2015 and 2019.
Best regards from Luxembourg!
Thank you Antony
You are right that the phantom polling growth of PHON just right now is fundamental to the de-stabilising of the federal coalition. A bit silly by them with 2 1/2 years to go until the next federal election? Perhaps the Bondi terrorist attack unwittingly forced the split because it woke up gun control & hate speech issues etc in the electorate?
But there doesn’t seem to be a de-stabilising of the Queensland LNP yet. In fact recent bi-elections have tended to consolidate the 2 party hegemony in Queensland.
Is this where Mr Joyce comes into it for PHON – the next Queensland state election? Not the next federal election.
Bizarre it may be to us southerners, but Mr Joyce will add credibility to PHON candidates in the next State election if he campaigns for them in Central and Northern Queensland.
Do I understand that your historical analysis is that in these circumstances Labor’s return to government in Queensland is more likely than not?
COMMENT: My comments are about national politics and may not apply to Queensland state politics. There is no sign that the LNP is about to split. Labor’s problem for winning the next election is trying to win back seats in the northern regional cities that it lost at the 2024 election. That may be helped by a surge in One Nation support, especially if the Crisafuli government goes through with its promise to re-introduce optional preferential voting.
Antony, do you think the best option would be for the Liberal and National Parties to merge at a National level the way they did in Queensland?
COMMENT: The Queensland merger was driven in part by the Nationals having once been the state’s dominant non-Labor party, but that strength being diminished as the party was largely wiped out on the Gold and Sunshine Coasts in the early 2000s. When the state Coalition was in opposition, the Nationals were the larger party. But increasingly, the sort of swing that would elect a Coalition government was likely to deliver the Liberal Party more seats. So which leader should become Premier? It was an issue raised out of the blue by Liberal Leader Bruce Flegg in 2006 and helped re-elect the Beattie Labor government. It played a large part in the formation of the LNP ahead of the 2009 election.
In every other state the Nationals are a smaller and overwhelmingly rural party. The resistance to merger has been out of fear that forming a single non-Labor party would see a new entrant sweep up the Nationals’ former seats. Better the devil you know is the view of the Liberal Party.
One nation’s rise is not surprising given that the same thing is happening across the Western world: Reform should win the next election, Trump is in power, and the AFD should receive the highest number of votes in the next election (but it still won’t be able to form government due to reasons I won’t go into).
This is all being driven by mass migration into the West.
Great to see you back again Antony!
The Liberal Party’s sun has sunk. They will be finished, it may take 15 years, but the Libs will end up the Democratic Labour Party of the 21st Century. If the Libs do a preference deal with Labor at the exclusion of One Nation, they will be signing their political death warrant.
I am curious as to why the Libs and Nats favour ON for preferences. It seems like shooting one in one’s own foot. Yes or No?
COMMENT: I think the rise of One Nation has put the Coalition in a terrible bind. One Nation is now polling so strongly it is now impossible for the Coalition to win seats without good preference flows from One Nation. And One Nation is now polling strongly enough that the Liberals and Nationals will be excluded and have their preferences distributed. From only 3 or 4 instances in the last 28 years, the Coalition now faces the prospect of having its preferences distributed in dozens of seats. Is the Coalition prepared to actively elect Labor ahead of One Nation? Some of the party’s membership don’t agree with that approach. As I’ve written elsewhere, One Nation is threatening the very existence of the Liberal and National Parties and nit is not clear which option on preferences will save the parties.