Polling conducted for Nine this week showed One Nation leader Pauline Hanson overtaking Anthony Albanese as voters’ preferred prime minister for the first time.
The result follows a series of recent polls in which One Nation has emerged as respondents’ preferred party.
Polling is a regular feature of Australian politics, used by media outlets and political parties to track how voters are feeling.
But how does it actually work?
Pollsters
Research companies that conduct public opinion polls and surveys are known as pollsters.
In Australia, media companies commission polling firms to research voter sentiment and public opinion. Major pollsters includeRedBridge, DemosAU, Roy Morgan and YouGov.
Polling companies often ask people, via online panels, phone interviews and text messages, which party they would rank first on their ballot if an election were held tomorrow, and who they would prefer as prime minister.
So, how do they get results that are representative? One method used by some companies is multi-level regression with post-stratification (thankfully known by its acronym MRP).
MRP uses demographic characteristics such as age, gender, education level and location toidentify voting patterns. Pollsters also consider how different demographic groups have voted inthe past.
Ultimately, polls use the responses of a relatively small group (usually at least 1,000 people) to make informed estimates about the views of the broader population.
Recent results
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In the lead-up to the 2025 federal election, One Nation attracted 7% support on a first-preference basis in the Resolve Political Monitor (RPM) poll conducted for Nine. The party went on to receive 6.4% of the primary vote.
The tides shifted at the end of 2025 and into early 2026, however, when One Nation’s first-preference support nearly doubled between November and February.
The latest RPM poll shows Pauline Hanson ahead ofAnthony Albanese as preferred Prime Minister for the first time.
Can Hanson be PM?
While some countries vote directly for their leader, Australia does not.
Instead, Australians vote for candidates to represent them in parliament. The leader of the party or coalition that wins majority in the House of Representatives becomes Prime Minister.
For Hanson to become Prime Minister, she would need to resign from the Senate, win a House of Representatives seat*, and lead a party or coalition that wins at least 76 seats in the 150-seat lower house.
*This is not a legal requirement, but a long-standing convention that has only been broken once.
At the last election, Labor won 94 seats and the Coalition won 43. One Nation currently holds two lower-house seats. It picked up one through a by-election and one through a defection.
Last month, a RedBridge MRP poll – a seat-by-seat modelling exercise based on more than 6,000 voters – estimated One Nation could win between 46 and 59 seats if an election were held now.
It’s important to note that polls are not predictions. They are snapshots of public opinion at a particular moment in time.
