Polls Suggests One Nation Now Most Popular Party in Australia

One Nation has eclipsed Labor to become the most popular political party in the country, and leader Pauline Hanson is beating Anthony Albanese as preferred prime minister, according to a new poll.

Support for the conservative-leaning One Nation has risen four points to 31 percent, a Redbridge Group/Accent Research poll, published on Monday by the Australian Financial Review, shows.

Labor’s primary vote is at 28 percent, down three points since the poll firm’s last survey a month ago and the government’s budget that was announced on May 12, and the centre-right Coalition dropped two points to 20 percent.

It follows an earlier Roy Morgan survey after the federal budget that found One Nation’s support on 32 percent of 2,348 people surveyed compared to Labor’s 28.5 percent and the Coalition’s 16.5 percent.

One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce said the Redbridge poll was an “indicator, not a vote” and said the conservative-leaning party wasn’t getting ahead of itself.

“That would be hubris. It’s an incredible honour,” he told Seven’s Sunrise program on Monday.

Support for the Greens dipped one point to 12 percent and backing for the “other” category of parties rose two points to nine percent.

Labor leads One Nation 51 percent to 49 percent on the Redbridge poll’s two-party-preferred basis, calculated by asking respondents how they would direct their preferences.

The poll of 1,005 voters was conducted between Monday and Thursday, and has a 3.4 percent margin of error.

Senator Hanson’s net favourability—her approval rating minus her disapproval rating—at zero.

No Australian politician in the poll has a positive net favourability rating: the prime minister is on negative 19 while both Liberal leader Angus Taylor and Nationals leader Matt Canavan are on negative four.

Albanese remains the preferred prime minister, with 31 percent favouring the Labor leader, while Senator Hanson is on 25 percent, and Taylor on 14 percent.

Albanese’s lead on the measure dropped two points and Senator Hanson’s rose by two points while Taylor’s remained unchanged.

Senior Labor Minister Tanya Plibersek said One Nation needed to begin providing more detailed policies if it wanted to form government.

“This is really typical of One Nation. You get a long list of complaints and no solutions,” she told Sunrise.

Joyce said he would start with repealing large parts of Labor’s budget and scrapping the Climate Change Department.

New Liberal party president and former Prime Minister Tony Abbott said he wouldn’t disparage Senator Hanson because she had shown a lot of resilience over the years.

“But I do believe that the strong Liberal-National Coalition has proven again and again that we are capable of giving Australia the good government our country so desperately needs,” he told Nine’s Today Show.

Before the poll results were released, Senator Hanson told Sky News on Sunday she has what it takes to become prime minister, but added she wasn’t sure if she would ever achieve the role.

She also expressed confidence One Nation MPs would be able to form a competent cabinet if her party won government.

The poll said 63 percent of respondents believed Australia was heading in the wrong direction, a result Redbridge Director Tony Barry said helped explain One Nation’s surge.

“That pervasive negative mood sentiment is fuelling more anti-establishment support and a view among a growing cohort of voters that the answer lies outside established norms and major parties,” Barry said.

By Zac de Silva in Canberra.