One Nation has surged to its highest-ever support in the latest Guardian Essential Poll, after weeks of furore over Pauline Hanson\u2019s burqa stunt and Barnaby Joyce\u2019s defection.<\/p>\n
Hanson\u2019s party recorded a 17% primary vote, half that of Labor\u2019s primary at 34%, with the Coalition\u2019s primary vote at 26%.<\/p>\n
But voters are split on whether Joyce\u2019s defection to One Nation<\/a> will make them more or less likely to vote for the minor party.<\/p>\n The Guardian Essential poll<\/a> of 978 voters last week also found that a majority of respondents said they felt pessimistic about the cost of living and almost three-quarters said they expected groceries and energy bills to go up in the new year.<\/p>\n Prime minister Anthony Albanese\u2019s approval rating took a small hit from last month, dropping from 47% to 43%, while voter disapproval increased by one point to 45%. Meanwhile, Liberal leader Sussan Ley\u2019s approval increased marginally from 31% to 34% and disapproval dropped one point to 43%.<\/p>\n One Nation\u2019s strongest demographic is voters aged 55 and over, recording a vote of 21%, followed by 35-to-54-year-olds (19%), while 10% of 18-to-34-year-olds said they would vote for the party.<\/p>\n Joyce, who quit the Nationals party last month, announced alongside Hanson he would join One Nation on Monday during a visit to his electorate of New England.<\/p>\n It followed weeks of speculation<\/a> as well as a highly publicised steak dinner in Parliament House, where the meat was controversially cooked on a sandwich press.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The poll, which preceded the defection, asked respondents whether they would be more or less likely to vote for One Nation if Joyce became its leader. Thirty-one per cent of respondents said they would be more likely to vote for the minor party, while 42% said they would be less likely to.<\/p>\n Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/a><\/p>\n Peter Lewis, executive director of Essential Media, said the polling showed Joyce has \u201calways been a zero-sum game\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cEver since entering parliament he has polarised opinion, [as] this shows,\u201d Lewis said.<\/p>\n \u201cWhether correlation or causation, there\u2019s been a bump in the One Nation vote around the chatter of Barnaby coming on board.\u201d<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Breaking News Australia<\/p>\n Get the most important news as it breaks<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Voters were also split over Hanson\u2019s controversial stunt of wearing a burqa into the Senate chamber \u2013 a repeat of the same stunt from 2017.<\/p>\n Forty-two per cent of respondents said they would be less likely to vote for One Nation following the stunt, while 35% said they would be more likely to.<\/p>\n Ahead of the Christmas and new year period, the poll also found a majority of respondents felt pessimistic about affordable housing and the cost of living.<\/p>\n On Tuesday, after the poll was conducted, the Reserve Bank held the cash rate at 3.6% while flagging the central bank could increase interest rates in 2026. On Monday, the treasurer, Jim Chalmers, announced the government would no longer extend the household energy rebate.<\/p>\n Sixty per cent of respondents told Essential they were feeling pessimistic that Australia will \u201cbe able to deal\u201d with the cost of living, while 58% said they were pessimistic about affordable housing. In both categories, 19% said they were feeling optimistic.<\/p>\n That pessimism followed the expectation of almost three-quarters of respondents that grocery prices (74%), energy prices (73%) and housing prices including rent and mortgages (73%) will rise in 2026.<\/p>\n As debate over migration has also dominated politics in recent weeks, 50% said they felt pessimistic about the issue. The poll also found 61% of respondents said they believe \u201cthe world is becoming more divided\u201d, while just 9% said they believe it is becoming more united.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One Nation has surged to its highest-ever support in the latest Guardian Essential Poll, after weeks of furore…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":337979,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-337978","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337978\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/337979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}