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You’ve almost – almost – got to feel sorry for the legacy media hacks at Melbourne’s lefty bible, the Age. Just two days ago, they were desperately clutching at the flimsiest straws, to try and pretend that the Bad Red Lady is finally going away. Those straws were what amounted to little more than statistical noise: a minor drop in the polls of one to two per cent for One Nation.
A day later, through gritted teeth, the Age is forced to admit that One Nation is at the least here to stay. Even in Australia’s wokest state.
Popular support for One Nation in Victoria has stabilised at one in five voters, with Pauline Hanson’s party now entrenched as a “third force” in state politics ahead of the November election.
The latest Resolve Political Monitor, conducted for the Age in twin surveys in March and April, reveals that One Nation’s spectacular rise this year has settled to 21 per cent of the primary vote, making it the disruptor of choice for people who want a change of government or to upend the two-party system.
Well, golly, just why would people want to up-end the two-party system in Victoria? After all, it’s offering them the stirling choice of a gaggle of dripping wet, blue-green wokesters in expensive suits, who are solely occupied with stabbing each other in the back – or a socialist behemoth of equal parts incompetence and corruption.
It also confirms strong public support for a royal commission into allegations of corruption and organised crime in the construction industry raised by this masthead and the CFMEU’s independent investigator Geoffrey Watson.
Watson has put the estimated cost to taxpayers of corruption on government-owned “Big Build” sites at $15 billion. Seven out of 10 of survey respondents – including 66 per cent of Labor voters – supported the establishment of a royal commission to get to the bottom of it.
In marginal seats, support was even higher at 75 per cent. Premier Jacinta Allan is resisting calls for an inquiry from anti-corruption campaigners, business groups and the opposition.
The latest survey lays bare the challenge before Labor to retain power on November 28 and for the coalition to seize it. The major parties have drifted marginally in primary support since the last poll was published in February, with the government ticking down one point to 27 per cent and the coalition softening to 29 per cent.
These are near-record lows that would once have wiped either of them off the electoral map. It’s only thanks to the two-party bias that they’re even still in the game. The polls would seem to indicate that, presently, voters who haven’t already committed to a third choice like One Nation (for the centre-right) or the Greens (for the left) are drifting about, clearly looking for an alternative but hesitant to take the leap.
Plenty have made up their minds, though.
Resolve founder Jim Reed said the motivations for people shifting to One Nation were made clear in a focus group he conducted last month in Melbourne as part of the survey.
“One Nation voters are fed up with Labor and don’t like Jacinta Allan but think the Liberal Party is not in a position to win or govern either,” he said.
“For some people, backing One Nation is a tactical choice to vote out Labor. For others, it is a Trumpian ‘drain the swamp’ mentality that seeks to get rid of both major parties. Either way, people are voting for change.”
Resolve, somewhat unusually, survey their subjects a month apart and average the results, attempting to iron out the ‘noise’ of any given moment. Their polling is showing a clear trajectory for One Nation: far from a blip, they’re here to stay, at least as a third force.
Support for One Nation has been stable, at between 19–23 per cent of the primary vote, between February and April.
The individual tracks also show support for Labor is edging into dangerous territory but remains above Allan’s nadir at the start of last year. The results for the coalition suggest that its gains under new leader Jess Wilson were wiped by the outbreak of internal party feuding centred on Moira Deeming’s chaotic preselection earlier this month.
The next big test for One Nation is yet another by-election, this time in the outer-suburban bayside seat of Nepean. Formerly a safe Liberal seat, it was won for the first time by Labor in 2018. The Libs re-took it in 2022. Labor aren’t even bothering to field a candidate this time around. As such, the by-election will be a litmus test of whether or not One Nation have cemented their position as the genuine centre-right opposition.
