Could One Nation actually win government?

Updated 3 November 2026 with the latest figures.

Pauline Hanson brought a Brisbane conservative conference to its feet twice on 11 October, SBS reported. She promised "One Nation's government will immediately call a Royal Commission into Net Zero."

The confidence has a basis. Newspoll, reported on 2 November, put One Nation on 28%, one point ahead of Labor and seven ahead of the Coalition. In May, former agribusiness owner David Farley won the NSW seat of Farrer, the party's first lower house win.

At the May 2025 election, One Nation won 6.4% of the national vote and no lower house seats. It now has two MPs and four senators, Victorians vote on 28 November, and the next federal election is due by 2028.

The answer shapes energy policy, migration and the Liberal Party's future. So does a poll lead mean the keys to the Lodge?

Probably not on its own. If its vote holds, One Nation is likely to win a big bloc of seats. Even the most favourable modelling leaves it short of the 76 needed to govern alone.

Confidence: Unlikely (One Nation governing in its own right). Three parts to this: the polls, the seat maths and the Liberal preferences.

Pollsters using different methods all have One Nation in the low 20s or higher. Roy Morgan had 22.5% in its 12 to 25 October survey, while Newspoll had 30% in mid-September and 28% in the poll reported on 2 November. That spread points to a real shift, not one rogue survey.

South Australia gave the polls a real test in March. One Nation won 22.9% of the vote there, up 20 points. Election analyst Kevin Bonham found the online pollsters got the shape right, while Roy Morgan's text-message poll and Resolve's were "a bit more excitable" about One Nation's size.

So the surge is real, though the highest figures may overstate it by a few points. Victorian polls taken from 15 to 29 October put it at 20% to 22%, down from 24% earlier.

In South Australia, 22.9% of the vote won One Nation 4 of 47 seats, or about 8.5% of them on our maths. Bonham found the candidate leading on first preferences won 45 of the 47 seats. One Nation won where it topped the count and lost almost everywhere else.

Spread-out support is the classic trap for a third party. Reform UK won 14.3% of the British vote in July 2024 and took 5 of 650 seats. Australia's preferential system is kinder, but the cliff still exists.

DemosAU, a pollster that models every seat from a large survey plus census data, shows how steep it is. Its late-2025 model put One Nation on 17% and gave it 12 of 150 seats. Its July 2026 model, with One Nation on 30%, gave it 53 to 66.

Preferential voting means your vote moves to your next choice once your first choice drops out. So Coalition how-to-vote cards could decide dozens of seats. DemosAU estimates 80% of One Nation voters would preference the Coalition, but only 67% of Coalition voters would return the favour.

History shows what a deal does. At Queensland's 1998 election, One Nation won 11 of 89 seats on 22.7% of the vote. Seven of those seats would have gone to Labor without Coalition preferences.

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor said in June he would "work with others to get rid of a rotten Labor Government". In July he also argued One Nation's promises would add about a trillion dollars of spending over ten years, SBS reported. Nationals leader Matt Canavan said in March he worries about "where Pauline would take this country".

In Victoria, Liberal sources say preference talks with One Nation wait until nominations close, The Poll Bludger reports. Bonham's scenarios give One Nation about 25 of 88 Victorian seats with Coalition preferences, against 12 on voters' own choices.

The strongest case for a One Nation government comes from David Flint, writing in The Spectator Australia in September. He argues the parties of the right can reach 76 seats if Coalition preferences stop leaking to Labor. In his example, Labor polls 40%, One Nation 33% and the Coalition 27%.

One Nation then wins 51.1% after preferences if two in three Coalition voters follow, and 54.6% at 80%. Hanson made the same pitch to Taylor in July: "Listen to the people, Angus, and work with me," she said.

He is right that preferences, not first votes, decide Australian elections. Farrer proved One Nation can win with them, and DemosAU's July model puts it close behind Labor's 60 to 72 seats.

But the evidence pushes back on the scale. His example gives One Nation a vote it has never recorded at an election, and the one real test turned 22.9% into just 4 seats. Even One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce called talk of the next election "hubristic" in May.

Nobody knows whether a poll vote in the high 20s survives two years of campaigning, candidate scrutiny and a shifting cost-of-living fight. Anthony Albanese said on 13 October voters will ask whether One Nation can govern; Jim Chalmers warned his own side that "facts don't beat feelings".

The verdict rests on one assumption: that One Nation's support stays spread thinly across many seats rather than concentrating where it can top the count.

One Nation is likely to win a serious bloc of seats, but governing alone is unlikely; its realistic path to power runs through a deal with the Liberals. Confidence: Unlikely (One Nation majority government). If that's right, the Liberals face a choice that could split them, and on this evidence Labor gains most from a divided right.

This piece draws on 28 sources: official and compiled results, polls and seat models from Newspoll, Roy Morgan, Resolve, DemosAU and RedBridge, two election analysts, reporting from the ABC, SBS, AAP, InDaily, Capital Brief and The Nightly, and one opinion piece arguing the other side. South Australian and 1998 Queensland figures come from compiled results pages; we could not open the Electoral Commission SA site directly. Seat shares (4 of 47 is 8.5%; 11 of 89 is 12.4%) and Flint's preference sums are our own arithmetic. Researched with AI tools; checked and edited by VOID.

One Nation leads some national polls, but in South Australia a similar vote won it only 4 seats out of 47. Seats depend on topping the count locally and on where Liberal voters send their preferences. So expect a big One Nation bloc if the vote holds, but not a One Nation government unless the Liberals deal it in.