Within just one week, three distinct polls – Resolve, Newspoll, and YouGov – presented three different narratives about Australian politics.
However, after perusing some of the subsequent discussions, one might conclude that Pauline Hanson’s movement had suddenly stagnated, collapsed, or perhaps experienced a significant rise, depending on the article that was read first.
As usual, the prevalent interpretation was that there had been a shift. Something was transforming. Labor had “rebounded”. The Coalition remained “steady”. The insurgence was diminishing, or possibly gaining traction, or maybe both simultaneously in different households consuming various media outlets.
Much of this reflects automatic reporting of movement from one poll to another, treating each new wave as a small-scale referendum, and highlights a deep misunderstanding of the reality of the Australian electorate.
We are not in a standard political climate. We are amid a significant realignment, and the tools designed for typical periods, including the tendency to perceive each poll as an isolated judgement on political dynamics, are inadequate.
To grasp the changes in One Nation’s votes, one must cease focusing solely on the weekly figures and begin analyzing the underlying trends.
What polls genuinely evaluate
Let’s begin with a straightforward observation that many columnists shun – during times of electoral change, various sampling methods, distinct weighting strategies, and differing question sequences create more substantial discrepancies than seen in stable conditions.
This isn't a shortcoming of the polls; rather, it is a characteristic of the present moment. The nation is experiencing a transition.
In a stable two-party system where most voters are either firmly committed or somewhat loosely affiliated with one of two parties, polling tends to be a relatively simple task. You gather samples, adjust them based on known preference trends and demographic standards, and arrive at a result that closely aligns with other credible pollsters, aside from a few points of variation.
That was the situation in Australia from the 1950s up until 2022. This environment shaped the foundations of much of our political reporting.
That version of Australia no longer exists.
In the current landscape, an individual respondent's reply is influenced by a series of variables that have gained significance only in the last five to six years.
Factors include whether respondents are given One Nation as a listed option, if they are inquiring about the party or its leader, whether the poll is taken online or via phone, and whether the sample represents politically active citizens or catches the indecisive, transactional voters who now determine elections.
Additionally, the timing of the poll – whether it was conducted during a news cycle focused on fuel prices, immigration, a terrorist incident, or another post from Trump on social media – has considerable impact.
During a stable phase, all these methodological decisions lead to minor differences. However, in a period of realignment, they create the two-to-five point discrepancies observable between various polls.
The polls do not significantly contradict one another. Each one represents a distinct segment of an electorate that is actively shifting ideologically and psychologically, transitioning from a two-party framework to a multiparty landscape.
This is not a new insight. It stands out as one of the most well-established conclusions in the field of comparative political science.
Voices in academia have pointed this out. In his work Ruling the Void, Peter Mair chronicled the prolonged decline of party loyalty within Western democracies, cautioning that the weakening of stable party identities would result in electorates that are increasingly difficult to interpret, survey, and manage.
Mair’s observations have proven accurate. Research by Dassonneville and Hooghe published in the European Journal of Political Research regarding electoral volatility and dealignment reveals that as the connections between voters and parties diminish, electoral actions become more unstable and unpredictable, not as a fleeting anomaly, but rather as a new norm.
Dalton and Wattenberg in Parties Without Partisans presented a similar analysis for the advanced industrial democracies overall.
The literature on measurement supports this narrative. The Pedersen index, created in the late 1970s, was the first detailed effort to calculate net electoral volatility between elections—the percentage of votes shifting from one party to another.
Historically, the Pedersen index in stable Western European democracies fluctuated between five and ten. Since the onset of the global financial crisis, it has surpassed 20 in several instances—and in nations where there have been the most significant realignments, it has risen even higher.
Recent research from Europe has further clarified this phenomenon—volatility is particularly prevalent in the “left-behind” areas located in outer metropolitan and regional electorates where there is a significant disparity between actual experiences and the narratives put forth by elites.
Rodríguez-Pose’s research on “the irrelevant places” offers the clearest overview of current events in the developed regions of the world. It also accurately reflects the electoral landscape that supports One Nation.
When experts discuss the changes in Western European democracies, they refer to dealignment and realignment, which are two interconnected processes that may appear as a single occurrence in the short term.
Dealignment refers to the weakening of traditional party loyalties, making voters less predictable, more willing to change their preferences, and more influenced by immediate factors.
Realignment, on the other hand, is a gradual emergence of new divides and the formation of new political alliances. During a period of realignment, both phenomena can be observed simultaneously – dealigned voters shifting in the short term, while larger structural changes subtly alter the political landscape.
This explains the discrepancies in polling data. Weekly fluctuations may appear significant but often carry little meaning. Therefore, the long-term trend is the most important aspect to monitor.
Insights on One Nation’s long-term trajectory
The long-term trend regarding One Nation is now clear, and it is essential to highlight this, as it has often been overshadowed by months of sporadic reporting.
Approximately 80 percent of One Nation’s increase since the federal election in 2025 has originated from the Coalition. The rest has come in smaller portions from Labor and various minor parties on the right.
This constitutes the fundamental narrative. Everything else is merely statistical variation surrounding this key point.
This same trend has been observed in comparable democracies over the past ten years.
In the UK, Reform UK has attracted a significant portion of its support straight from the Conservatives, with nearly 80 percent of 2024 Reform voters previously voting for the Conservatives in 2019.
The combined vote share for Labour and Conservative parties in the UK has plummeted from over 80 percent in 2017 to around the mid-30s today.
The Electoral Reform Society now characterizes the UK as a true multiparty system, with five parties within a 15-point margin of each other. The party dynamics that brought forth leaders like Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair have been entirely transformed.
In Sweden, the 2022 elections saw the Sweden Democrats emerge as the second-largest parliamentary party, primarily taking votes from the Moderates.
Italy has completely shifted away from the former Christian Democratic and Communist power dynamics. In France, the post-war political framework has been disrupted.
In each instance, political analysts have tracked a similar trajectory – an extended phase of dealignment, followed by a catalyst (or several events), a rapid rise in voting volatility, and finally, the establishment of a new order.
In every case, polling during this transition period was unpredictable. Individual polls frequently showed drastic variations. Analysts often declared that the emerging party had already “reached its peak. ”
In every instance, the misinterpretation of this noise as meaningful information occurred. And in each case, the structural transformation continued unabated.
Specifics of the Australian context
Australia possesses two characteristics that render its realignment both more foreseeable and more impactful than those seen in European instances.
The first aspect is preferential voting, indicating that the collective behavior observed in primary voting figures is systematically converted into outcomes that favor two parties with very little deviation.
The second aspect involves compulsory voting, meaning that voters who are disengaged and facing economic challenges, and would typically refrain from voting in the US or the UK, are required to participate and, importantly, must voice their discontent through casting a ballot instead of choosing not to vote.
One Nation is not merely attracting disgruntled right-wing supporters, but it is also bringing in individuals who would completely abstain from voting in a voluntary electoral system.
This contributes to the fact that our political realignment is manifesting more distinctly and swiftly than similar trends in the US or the UK. It also explains the high volatility observed in polling data.
The electorate propelling the rise of One Nation – those from outer suburbs who are culturally traditionalist, financially struggling, and not well-informed – are the demographics that pollsters have traditionally found challenging to engage, assess, and accurately reflect in data.
Their views tend to be more fluid. While their likelihood to vote is consistent, their political affiliations are truly uncertain. Conducting surveys with them at various times, using different phrases and in response to diverse local and global happenings, will yield varying results.
In future polls, One Nation will likely fluctuate between the low twenties and the mid to high twenties. At times it may appear to be experiencing growth, and at other instances, it may seem to be declining.
The straightforward truth is that neither situation is occurring in any substantial way. What is actually taking place is the transformation of the Coalition’s traditional support base, the two-party system that has dominated Australian political life for decades is gradually disassembling, and a new framework is developing beneath the surface.
To truly grasp this situation, set aside the weekly polling numbers. Focus on the overall trend.
0 Comments