EMRS: What Happens When You Take A Mess And Then Throw In One Nation?

EMRS Lib 29 (-5) ALP 23 (-2) Green 15 (-2) IND 15 (-4) ON 14 (new) others 4 (-1)

Seat estimate off this poll if election "held now" Lib 10-13 ALP 9-10 Grn 5 ON 4 IND 4-5 SFF 0-1

EMRS have released basic details of the first Tasmanian voting intention poll to include One Nation in the readout (I will add a link to the full report when it is up).  One Nation are in the process of registering for state elections but are not registered yet.  This follows a federal poll for the state they released on Friday.  

The addition of One Nation has immediately seen them record a substantial 14%, but this is well below the 24% they recorded in the Tasmanian federal poll, with the Liberal vote in particular holding up much better.  One Nation's gains have come from across the board, but especially from a government that was already down on its election result in the previous poll, meaning that when this poll is compared with the election, most of the 14 points is at the expense of the Government which is down 11.  Labor and the Greens are not so far off their state marker, Independents may in effect be down somewhat given that Tasmanian state polls offering a generic "independent" option tend to overestimate election support for independents by about 4 points.

As I write this article I have not seen any electorate breakdowns, which should be treated with considerable caution anyway because of the low subsample size.  My seat by seat view of what would happen in each seat off the statewide figures is as follows:

Bass: One Nation would get quota and win a seat at the expense of either the Liberals or perhaps more likely independent George Razay.  

Braddon: One Nation would get close to two quotas and win two seats, one at the expense of the Liberals and the other at the expense of either major party (I suspect they would eat into Craig Garland's vote but that he would also cushion their surge and that he would most likely be OK with the help of Greens preferences)

Clark:  Possibly the same 2-2-2-1 result as 2025.  While Helen Burnet leaving the Greens is very bad news for the party's ability to win two, on these figures it doesn't look like anyone in particular would be stopping them (unless it was Burnet herself).  The One Nation vote would be too low to win a seat.

Franklin: This could also be a status quo result as although One Nation could expect half a quota or a bit more this doesn't seem like a threat to any of the incumbents.

Lyons: One Nation would win a seat here too, at the expense of either the Liberals or Carlo Di Falco (SF+F).  

So overall the Liberals would be likely to remain the largest party, though a 10-10 seat tie is faintly possible.  The broad left could potentially get away with no or only one seat loss but would face the same hurdle to forming government as before: Labor would have to talk to the Gr**ns.  (One might flippantly imagine this dynamic dragging on to 2037 and the Liberals still governing with, say, eight seats because nobody else will cut them down.)

Would this actually happen at an election?  The past history is that One Nation surges frequently collapse and also that the party tends to underperform even compared to its final polling.  It's an endlessly long way to the next election if this parliament goes nearly full term and nobody knows where the current realignment in Australian polling will end up by then - will One Nation have faded? disintegrated? merged with the Coalition?  surged further?  Who can say.  What I will say is that for now One Nation would be likely to win four seats even if it only got, say, 11%, and even if its candidates were obscure.  We have seen with Jacqui Lambie Network how voters attracted to a brand simply linear-voted for its ticket and some obscure and surprising MPs were elected.  

I think state Labor could be mildly relieved by this poll because there was potential for more of the appearance of One Nation to be at their expense pushing them into the teens but that has not occurred. The soft landing for Labor in this one is especially as Josh Willie has polled a reasonable net -1 net likeability score, not -10 or worse, and similar now to Jeremy Rockliff on +1. The gap on preferred Premier (results not released in November because of a readout error) has also narrowed to 40-29, mainly because Willie is now more established in the role.

 The Liberals have more room for concern, but also their vote is holding up better than in states where the party is in opposition.   And they were also on 29% (and trailing Labor, which they are not now) in the last public poll before the July 2025 election, yet polled 40% at that election.  

Federal poll

The EMRS federal poll was released on last week's Poll Position episode which also includes a lengthy interview with Lee Hanson, who is the effective Tasmanian leader of the party and appears a very likely future Senator.  Hanson jnr is a significant figure because she is able to present One Nation in a more temperamentally modest way than Pauline Hanson or Malcolm Roberts, and able to appeal to a younger audience.  

Again not too much should be read into the federal seat breakdowns but with the exception of Clark if Andrew Wilkie runs again I think they are reasonably indicative and post them below:

The ALP/Liberal and ALP/One Nation figures are respondent-allocated.  There is a particular issue with respondent preferences for Labor vs One Nation shadow-2PP estimates which is that they do not take into account the substantial portion of Liberal voters who follow how to vote cards.  In Tasmania this is less of a thing than elsewhere with the Reps follow rate for Liberal HTVs likely to be less than a quarter compared to around 40% elsewhere.  Nonetheless if the Liberals recommend preferences to One Nation they can do better than respondent preferences suggest (and if the Liberals recommend against them they may do a fair bit worse).  My estimates for Braddon on the above primaries would be 51-49 to One Nation vs Labor, Bass 54-46 to Labor vs One Nation, Lyons 52-48 to Labor vs One Nation - all very close.  In all cases (well, assuming Anne Urquhart recontests) Labor has incumbents while the One Nation contenders would be low-profile and that plus the tendancy of ON to underperform means that probably Labor would hold all these seats.  But all these are on paper marginal Labor seats vs One Nation in the current federal polling environment, and this is not surprising as several projections around the psephosphere have had Braddon especially as a potential seat for One Nation.

In Clark there is a long history of Andrew Wilkie's vote being massively underestimated in polls that do not name him.  As a career average I think he would have polled about 1.7 times the generic independent vote.  This Clark sample (and the 16% for One Nation seems too high) looks more like a window of the massive Labor/Green/left-indie bunfight that can break out for this seat whenever the incumbent does retire.

There is a great deal more detail in the episode for those interested and see the full poll report here which has a lot of detail including a One Nation only special on respondents stated rationales for supporting said party.

I may add more comments later especially if more details of the state poll come out, but for now, welcome to Tasmanian politics.  A total mess one day, then even messier the next.