In the aftermath of Bondi, One Nation’s poll results seemed to be on the up and up. Now, One Nation’s primary vote has eased to 22 percent in April polling. The LNP primary vote sits at 23 percent and the ALP at 32 percent.
This still makes One Nation a major electoral force. But can they win government?
April polling from Kos Samaras’s RedBridge found telling cleavages among voters who report being under severe financial stress. Gen X voters under severe financial stress are voting for One Nation at a rate of 40+ percent.
Among Gen Z, there is a similar abandonment of the major parties among those under severe financial stress. But for Gen Z voters, the alternative they’re moving towards is the Greens. Gen Z voters in severe financial stress vote for the Greens at 40+ percent.
These are the polls. The subsequent qualitative analysis for the numbers, which comes out of focus groups, is the following.
“Young people are more predisposed to a distributionist type response,” says Samaras. “They are more willing to blame institutions, corporates, vested interests [and] power for their plight.”
That’s a major barrier to One Nation capturing hearts and minds in this group.
“Gen X is more about loss of agency and status. They have a response to the crisis that they’re experiencing that they’ve lost because someone else has gained, and that someone else is not always the big end of town.”
Gen X support for One Nation, in other words, is coming sizably from those who are struggling, but were already predisposed to voting right of centre. That has left the LNP’s primary vote among Gen X voters in the low teens.
Moreover, former LNP supporters who have a trade certificate or TAFE qualification, rather than a university degree, are overwhelmingly now behind One Nation. What’s left of the Liberal party vote are often people with property and other forms of wealth.
Meanwhile, Labor’s 2PP vote among millennials remains in the mid-50s.
All of this spells Albanese in 2028 again, sitting at the uninspiring but victorious centre of a mixed bloc of cultural and demographic sentiments and economic shifts.
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