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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
World
Josh Nicholas

One Nation’s rise puts the next election in ‘unknown territory’ – but does Pauline Hanson really have a path to government?

Pauline Hanson standing in front of Parliament House with a slightly concerned look on her face
Pauline Hanson’s One Nation will likely have to win three-quarters of the lower house seats in outer metropolitan and rural and regional areas to attain government, a pollster says. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

One Nation’s spectacular rise from a distant 6% of the vote in the last election to first or second in some recent polls has upended Australian politics. It has also made it a lot harder to predict what exactly will happen at the next election.

Traditionally, pollsters and election experts would look at how preferences flowed in previous elections when estimating two-party preferred numbers, or translating polling into seat projections. This was fairly predictable when almost every seat would come down to a contest between Labor and the Coalition.

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