Pollster and RedBridge director Kos Samaras has offered his sharpest warning yet, arriving at a moment when national numbers are tightening for Labor while the conservative vote splinters. Drawing on new Resolve polling, he links the Coalition’s slide to the emotional charge behind the immigration debate that has shaped the past few months.
Samaras did not hold back on the scale of the problem. “This graph should terrify anyone inside the Liberal Party,” he said, pointing to Resolve’s finding that 39 per cent of all Coalition voters would be more likely to support One Nation if Barnaby Joyce were leading it. The former Nationals leader quit the party this week after 30 years, and while he has not confirmed a move to One Nation, the speculation has already reshaped internal fears about defections. As Samaras put it, “The potential for Barnaby Joyce to accelerate defections from the Liberals to One Nation is enormous.”
The new polling snapshots capture a Coalition that is losing ground in almost every direction. Outside the three biggest states, Labor’s primary vote has surged to 41 per cent, up ten points, while the Coalition has fallen to 19 per cent. One Nation sits at 15 per cent, and the Greens at 12 per cent. In Victoria, the two major parties are tied on 31 per cent each, but One Nation is holding on to double figures. The Greens have slipped, and independents continue to carve out space. In NSW, Labor is at 35 per cent, while the Coalition has dropped to 26 per cent, its lowest in months. One Nation’s rise to 17 per cent in the state shows where the traffic is flowing.
Samaras argues that the Liberal Party cannot solve this through sharper rhetoric or culture-war positioning. “There’s also no point in the Liberal Party trying to outflank One Nation on the Right,” he said. “When given the choice, these voters will always go for the real thing over the imitation, especially when the imitation is the party that’s spent a lifetime disappointing them.” The blunt analogy came next: “Changing leaders may not help either. You need a good jockey but if the horse is old, it’s old.”
The pattern is familiar to anyone watching conservative politics in the UK. Long-running structural decline, a base that splinters rather than consolidates, and insurgent parties claiming authenticity over experience. The Australian version has its own contours, but the numbers suggest that the gap between traditional Liberal voters and the voters now drifting to One Nation is widening rather than stabilising.
This year’s political conversation has revolved around housing, migration settings and the uneven pressure of cost-of-living pain. Samaras said the immigration debate was always going to hit the Coalition harder than Labor. “Just after August 31, we warned that the immigration debate would end up damaging the conservative side of politics,” he said. “Most animating the debate assumed it would hurt Labor. Instead, they are now getting a live lesson in political psychology.”
The lesson, in this case, is that anger does not always follow the neat lines imagined by strategists. Frustration with congestion, rent and stalled wages is real, but so is the divide between the voters who want a tighter immigration cap and those who believe the issue is being used to validate harder positions that make compromise difficult. That tension is not unique to Australia. What makes it sharp here is the collapse in confidence within the Coalition’s own base, where few seem convinced the party has a path back to the centre of national decision-making.
‘No point in the Liberal Party trying to outflank One Nation on the Right’
The rise of One Nation across several regions only adds to that pressure. Its steady numbers are reshaping the Coalition’s outer wall while Labor maintains its footing across key groups, particularly women and younger voters. Leadership uncertainty has created further drift, with undecided voters climbing in multiple polls.
The national mood heading into year’s end is uneasy. Protests about mass immigration and housing are set to roll into 2026, with organisers pointing to a larger gathering planned for 26 January. The noise around these movements is growing, yet the Resolve numbers suggest something quieter beneath the surface. Labor is holding its ground. The Coalition is drifting. One Nation is tapping into frustration that has been building for months and is now measurable across several voter groups.
The figures point to a right-of-centre bloc under stress. The pressure is coming from inside its own base as much as from its opponents. The direction of travel is clearer than any single poll, and for now the Coalition carries the heavier burden of explaining where it goes next. One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has travelled to Joyce’s home region in NSW, adding to the growing political attention surrounding his departure.
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