And Victorian voters should be paying very close attention. Right. Let’s talk about the political earthquake that just happened.
The Coalition’s primary vote has collapsed to 24% in the latest Newspoll—a record low since Newspoll started tracking in 1985. Meanwhile, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation has surged to 15%, matching its highest ever polling result.
Reread those numbers. The Coalition is only 9 points ahead of One Nation. NINE POINTS.
For context, at the May 2025 federal election, One Nation got 6.4% while the Greens got 12.2%. In just six months, One Nation has more than doubled its support and is now challenging the Greens as Australia’s third-largest party.
What’s Actually Happening Here
This isn’t just bad polling for the Coalition. This is an existential crisis.
After the Coalition’s massive election defeat, new leader Sussan Ley chose to shift the party toward the centre, trying to win back women and moderate voters who’d switched to Teals and Independents. Strategic move, right? Appeal to the sensible middle?
Wrong. Or at least, not without consequences.
That centrist shift has opened up a massive opportunity for Australia’s populist right, with disillusioned conservative voters now parking their votes with smaller right-wing parties. The Coalition tried to be all things to all people and ended up being nothing to the people who were their rusted-on base.
The Immigration Question Nobody Wants to Talk About (But Voters Are Screaming About)
Here’s the bit that makes politicians nervous: 60% of Australians think migration numbers have gone “too far” or “much too far”. Among One Nation voters? A staggering 90% chose “much too far,” with 70% selecting this option.
But here’s where it gets interesting. 77% of Coalition voters also chose “too far” options on immigration. These are the people the Libs are hemorrhaging to One Nation right now.
The Coalition is watching its right flank completely collapse. Conservatives in the Coalition are already positioning themselves to raise immigration politics in an attempt to limit One Nation’s gains. Sound familiar? It’s exactly what happened in the late 1990s when One Nation got 23% in the 1998 Queensland election.
Why Victorian Voters Should Care
“Keith,” I hear you saying, “this is federal politics. Why should I care sitting here in Melbourne?”
Three reasons:
First: Labor now leads the Coalition 57-43 on a two-party-preferred basis. This isn’t a competitive federal opposition. This is a train wreck. And when federal opposition is weak, state governments get lazy.
Second: The rise of populist parties changes everything about preference flows and seat calculations. If One Nation’s current polling was replicated at an election, they’d be in a position to win House of Representatives seats. Forget the old binary of Labor vs Coalition. Australian politics is fragmenting.
Third: This is part of a global trend. In the UK, the far-right Reform party is polling at 30.5%, ahead of both Labour at 19.1% and the Conservatives at 17%. When mainstream conservative parties shift to the centre, they create a vacuum on the right. Nature—and politics—abhors a vacuum.
The Leadership Death Spiral
Here’s the brutal bit: Sussan Ley’s net approval has plummeted to -33, dropping 24 points since August. That’s not just bad. That’s catastrophic.
Albanese leads Ley 54-27 as a better prime minister. When you’re getting absolutely pantsed in the preferred PM stakes AND your primary vote is in the toilet AND One Nation is eating your base, you’ve got a problem.
The Coalition is stuck. Move further right to shore up the base? You lose the moderates you’re trying to win back. Stay in the centre? Watch One Nation continue to feast on your traditional voters.
What This Means
Look, I’m not going to pretend to have all the answers here. But a few things are clear:
Australian politics is entering uncharted territory. The combined Labor and Coalition primary vote is at its lowest level in Newspoll history. The old two-party system is crumbling in real time.
The issues driving this—immigration anxiety, cost of living, housing affordability, the sense that the next generation will have it worse than their parents—these aren’t going away. And when mainstream parties fail to address voter concerns, voters find alternatives.
Sometimes those alternatives are rational. Sometimes they’re not. But they’re always a symptom of deeper problems that the major parties have failed to solve.
For Victorian voters, the lesson is simple: don’t assume the federal political landscape will look anything like it did five years ago. Don’t assume the Coalition will be competitive in the next federal election. And don’t assume that the fragmenting of conservative politics stops at the federal level.
Political earthquakes have aftershocks. This one is just getting started.
