Why One Nation can win the next federal election

June 12, 2026 — 5:00am

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One Nation can win the next federal election. Whether that comes to pass depends on a galaxy of factors whose orbits we can only guess. But now, for the first time, it’s possible to see how those orbits could deliver Pauline Hanson to the Lodge, even if it’s not the likeliest outcome.

Yes, this is about polling. But it’s about more than that. It’s about the forces beneath the numbers which are all heading in one direction. The only question is if and when those forces halt, and how far One Nation has gotten in the meantime.

Multiple polls have One Nation in first place on primary votes, ahead of Labor. That is obviously a sensational development, but actually the most seismic poll still had Labor in front, published late last week in this masthead. That’s because it showed the One Nation vote breaching what had previously been the great wall of Australian politics defined by two major characteristics: geography and formal education.

Simply, Labor dominated the cities and the tertiary educated. The Coalition and One Nation were left to fight over the rural vote, which can never be enough to deliver government. As long as this arrangement remained intact, One Nation could surge as much as it liked and not pose a serious threat. At most, it could replace the Coalition as a regionally based opposition party.

Now we learn One Nation has become more popular with women than with men. It is picking up younger, tertiary educated, high-income city voters. It has commenced its urban raid, crossing the containment lines that exclude it from government. People keen to write off One Nation as the party of........

© The Age