According to Monday’s Newspoll, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party is now polling 6% across Australia. The minor party has polled consistently in the 5-6% range across five polls from Newspoll and Essential since September. One Nation polled 4.3% in the Senate at the last federal election. The party only polled 1.3% in the House of Representatives due to the party only running a small number of candidates.
It is notoriously difficult to accurately gauge support for minor parties. Pollsters don’t ask about every party when polling, so those parties included in the poll are given an advantage. Despite these difficulties, a 6% poll result is not infeasible for One Nation, who have significantly increased their public profile since winning four seats in the Senate at the recent election.
One Nation is only one of many rightwing minor parties that ran in the last election. Others include the Christian Democratic party, Family First and the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers. These parties polled well over 10% in the Senate at the 2016 election, roughly equivalent to the vote for the Greens.
The vote for parties to the right of the Coalition has gradually grown over time, but since the collapse of One Nation in the early 2000s no party has been able to unify this base. One Nation was the clear standout rightwing minor party in the election, winning the most senators and the highest vote of any party other than Labor, the Coalition or the Greens, and it’s not hard to imagine Hanson’s party consolidating votes previously cast for other rightwing minor parties.
This has given Hanson the opportunity to consolidate her position and pick up voters floating around with other minor parties. One Nation will need to strengthen its party machinery to make it capable of running candidates all over the country (something few parties can achieve) and ensure discipline among its elected officials.
The previous iteration of One Nation from 1998 until 2001 was notorious for internal party splits – most of those members elected to the Queensland state parliament left the party in quick succession. It will be a challenge for the bloc of four One Nation senators to stick together through this term – something that the Palmer United party couldn’t manage in the last parliament.
The first major test of support for One Nation will come in the Queensland state election, which is due in 2018 but could well be brought forward to 2017. Depending on its campaign and choice of candidates, it has the potential to pick up seats in regional Queensland, as it did at its peak in 1998 and 2001. The party may also look at regaining seats in the Western Australian Legislative Council, which faces election in early 2017.
Three of the four One Nation senators are up for election in 2019, along with most of the crossbench. It will be much harder to win election as a minor party with the higher half-Senate quota of 14.3%. A higher primary vote for One Nation will be necessary for the party to retain its Senate seats, but the party will need discipline to make it to the next election intact.
The leftwing minor party vote has been mostly concentrated in the Greens for the last decade, while the vote on the right wing has been dispersed among numerous parties. There’s no reason why a party couldn’t consolidate this vote, but it would require discipline and political nous.
If One Nation or some other group were able to consolidate its vote, it would become a significant force in the Senate and a group that the major parties would struggle to ignore. In the same way the Greens have threatened Labor seats in the lower house, a stronger rightwing minor party could well make the same threat against Coalition MPs.
