The success of One Nation at the 2016 Federal election, plus evidence in recent polls, suggests that the party could be a major player at next year's state elections in Western Australian and Queensland.
Both past results and polls show Queensland to be One Nation's strongest state. I'll deal with Queensland in a future post. In this post I'll look at the impact of One Nation in its second strongest state, Western Australia.
Western Australia goes to the polls on 11 March with the governing Liberal-National Barnett government trying to break the two term trend of recent WA governments.
Prior to 1959 the Labor Party in Western Australia had a long record of forming government, but the Liberal and National Parties have governed for 37 of the 57 years since. From the days of the Brand government in the 1960s, the Liberal and National Parties have been seen as the parties more in favour of developing the state's natural resources, while the Labor Party has struggled in a state with the nation's lowest proportion of unionised workers.
Two years ago with the economy booming, prospects for a change of government in March 2017 looked unlikely. Now the end of the mining construction boom has put the state's economy into decline, damaged the Barnett government's budget and more importantly damaged the government's reputation for economic management.
The 2017 election is looking closer than would have been predicted earlier this year, and now the wildcard of One Nation is again on the scene.
In 2001 the electoral success of One Nation played a part in the defeat of Richard Court's government and the election of Labor to office. Will One Nation play a similar role in 2017?
Polls have traditionally been poor at measuring One Nation support, and we have often seen late surges in support for the party as polling day approaches.
While we cannot predict the level of One Nation support next March, based on the party's electoral record we can predict where it will poll more strongly, where it might win seats, and how its preferences might be important.
As I will explain in this post, if One Nation repeats its past level of support, it will struggle to win lower house seats next March, but could win at least three Legislative Council seats.
Past elections have shown a consistent pattern of One Nation polling more strongly in regional Western Australia, but also polling well in outer southern and eastern parts of Perth.
One Nation has damaged the Liberal and National Parties in the past by taking first preference vote support which then dissipates as preferences to both sides of politics.
Let me go through the electoral record, starting with the recent revival in the party's fortunes.
Recent Comments
When are you going to do the Queensland Election site? COMMENT: I think Ill wait until we see the draft electoral boundaries later this month....
It looks fairly comprehensive and quite knowledgeable Antony - congratulations. Way better than the average eastern states election specialist mumblings were usually subjected to over here around this time. A quick question which I concede you may n...
Please let me know the process for posting a candidate profile for Dr Julie Owen an Independent candidate for Mining and Pastoral in the WA Legislative Council? COMMENT: We dont do profiles of Legislative Council candidates....
To my mind a great deal of this stuff is posturing, playing the huffing and puffing game, to see if we can;t get the to divert from the plan. No doubt Premier Barnett would like to fiddle with who the next candidate is, and no doubt Senator Hanson wo...