Leaked polling has One Nation winning NSW with 48 seats

What the Liberal-aligned poll said

Markson’s Monday report rested on confidential polling she said was done by a firm aligned with the Liberal Party. She didn’t name the firm, and News24 didn’t publish the sample size, the dates or the questions. So what follows is what she reported, not something anyone else has been able to check.

One Nation would win 48 seats. Labor would win 29, the Liberals eight, the Greens three and independents five. “Nationals, no seats. They’d lose them all to One Nation,” Markson said. A majority in the 93-seat Legislative Assembly is 47.

“It would be a wipeout for One Nation, Liberals would be demolished and Minns would lose 17 seats,” she said. Then she added a caution. “Other sources I’ve spoken to expect Minns to lose between 6 to 7 seats, but keep in mind he’s currently in minority government.”

The poll also asked how voters felt about the leaders. In Labor-held seats, Markson said, Anthony Albanese’s net favourability was minus 72 among men and minus 63 among women. Opposition Leader Angus Taylor was on minus 20 among men and minus 7 among women. Pauline Hanson was in positive territory, between plus 9 and plus 20 across different parts of Sydney. Net favourability is simply the share who like someone minus the share who don’t.

Markson said Hanson’s net rating in Steve Kamper’s seat of Rockdale, in Sydney’s south, was about plus 20. She took that as a sign the One Nation leader was “even popular among migrant families”. Kamper is a Labor minister. She also said Minns was up against a resurgent One Nation across southern Sydney and outer suburbs like Penrith, Camden and Heathcote.

“One Nation is doing so well that both Liberal and Labor operatives admit there’s a genuine prospect of a One Nation government at the New South Wales election in six months’ time,” Markson said. “Premier Chris Minns is in serious trouble with sources describing One Nation as a wrecking ball for both major parties.”

Then Labor’s numbers

On Wednesday 30 September Markson came back with what she said was NSW Labor’s own polling. News24’s segment was headlined that Labor’s polling predicts One Nation will be either the opposition or the government after the election. Markson said it showed Newman could become the next premier.

If that’s right, it’s a big deal, because it’d mean both major parties’ private research is pointing the same way. But again, in what we’ve read, no figures from the Labor polling were published beyond that headline finding. We don’t know the sample, the seats polled or the margin of error.

Private polls leak for a reason. A Liberal-aligned firm’s numbers showing the Liberals “demolished” could be a warning shot inside the party about its strategy. Labor numbers showing One Nation in the hunt could be meant to scare wavering Labor voters back. That doesn’t make the numbers wrong. It just means you should hold them more loosely than a published poll that shows its method.

What Newman said

Newman, a former investment banker and NSW trade commissioner in Tokyo, was named One Nation’s state leader at the end of August. He’s running in the Hunter seat of Cessnock, as we reported in Hanson’s announcement in the Hunter. Asked by News24 if the numbers surprised him, he played it cool.

“We still have six months to campaign and put forward an agenda which will all be driven by something that is not seen with the incumbent parties,” he said. “We want to be a party of less government, lower taxes and people from the private sector running government.”

He went straight at the experience question. “We’re often criticised for the fact that we’ve not run government before, but I would argue that the incumbent governments have not been running business very well.”

Then he set out his first priorities. “First of all, payroll tax. We want to have it in the metros and abolish it pretty much, or at least cut it to zero in the regions,” he said. “Obviously, there will be thresholds, but the idea is to stimulate business and get those companies who are bumping up against that payroll threshold and allowing them to go for it.”

Payroll tax is a state tax businesses pay once their wage bill goes over a threshold. Newman’s line about the metros comes out a bit garbled in the transcript. But in a September piece on One Nation’s website he described the plan as “a metro half-cut and a regional zero”.

“To do that, we also want to be very hard on crime, especially around youth crime. We’ve had a lot of issues around that,” he went on. “Energy is probably one of the highest things where we want to prioritise coal, coal-fired power, also lift the bans on uranium and nuclear power.”

And on the polling itself: “Pretty much what you’re seeing there is pretty close to what the numbers we’re receiving. We’re not quite at those numbers, but certainly more up-to-date polling may certainly suggest it’s going that way.” So by his own account, One Nation’s internal polling isn’t quite as rosy as the 48-seat projection.

Cessnock

Newman’s own seat is the test case. Labor has held Cessnock since 1927, apart from one term in the late 1980s, and holds it on a margin of about 23 per cent. On paper it’s about as safe as a Labor seat gets.

Markson said polling put Newman’s primary vote in Cessnock “in the low 40s”. The Sydney Morning Herald reported earlier in September on a private poll in the seat that had One Nation ahead of Labor 50 per cent to 24, according to The Poll Bludger. Neither of those has been published in full either.

What is on the public record is the last result. At the 2023 state election, One Nation’s candidate in Cessnock got 15.27 per cent and came second, ahead of the Nationals, while Labor’s Clayton Barr won 48.73 per cent of the primary vote, according to figures compiled by One News Australia. The Liberals didn’t run. To win, Newman would need to roughly triple One Nation’s vote. In a year when One Nation’s statewide vote has gone from 1.8 per cent at the last election to the mid to high 20s in the polls, that’s not impossible. But it’d be a huge local swing.

Markson said the One Nation threat was why Minns had been to the Hunter about 11 times this year.

What the published polls say

Here’s the firmer ground. Resolve Strategic’s latest NSW numbers came out on 18 September in the Sydney Morning Herald. They pool the NSW answers from Resolve’s two most recent national surveys, for a sample of 1,100.

Labor was on 29 per cent, unchanged. One Nation was on 25, also unchanged. The Coalition was up a point to 24. The Greens were on 11. Resolve also asked who’d make the best premier. Minns got 27 per cent, Liberal leader Kellie Sloane 15 and Newman 8. That’s a reminder Newman is still a new name for most voters, even if his party isn’t.

Other public polling has been kinder to One Nation. A survey by Insightfully for the Minerals Council of Australia, taken from 5 to 12 August among 1,000 voters, had Labor and One Nation level on 29 per cent with the Coalition on 18. One News Australia, which published the full report, said it showed One Nation on 37 per cent in regional NSW and 31 per cent across marginal seats. A DemosAU poll in June had Labor on 32, One Nation on 27 and the Coalition on 20.

So the published range for One Nation runs from about 25 to 29 per cent statewide. That’s an extraordinary number for a party that got 1.8 per cent in 2023. But it puts One Nation level with or just behind Labor, not miles in front. Getting from those primary votes to an outright majority of seats depends on how the vote is spread and on preferences.

Why preferences matter in NSW

New South Wales uses optional preferential voting. You can number every box, or you can just put a 1 and stop. That’s different from federal elections, where you have to number every box.

That matters a lot here. Under optional preferencing, plenty of votes exhaust, which means they stop counting once the voter’s first choice is knocked out. So a party leading on first preferences in a three-way race can win seats on a smaller share of the vote than it would federally, because its rivals can’t count on preference flows to catch up. That’s part of why a party on 25 to 30 per cent statewide could, in theory, win a lot of seats if its vote sits in the right places.

It cuts the other way too. If One Nation’s vote is spread evenly, it could rack up second places without winning many seats. Seat projections from private polls are only as good as the assumptions about how votes and preferences fall in each electorate, and we haven’t seen those assumptions.

Minns and the Hunter

Chris Minns leads a minority government. Labor won 45 seats in 2023, two short of a majority, and governs with crossbench support. He’s taken the One Nation threat seriously for months. In June he told the ABC One Nation was a genuine threat to Labor and to his own seat.

He’s also warned against a Liberal-One Nation partnership, calling the idea of a coalition between the Liberals, the Nationals and One Nation a “Frankenstein’s monster”. Markson said Minns was putting distance between himself and Albanese on several issues, including the tobacco excise and the budget, because the Prime Minister’s brand was costing him votes.

Labor’s been going after One Nation in parliament too. Newman wrote on One Nation’s website that the party was named 46 times in Legislative Assembly question time on 15 September, even though it has no MPs. “Flattering, given the party holds no seats in either house,” he wrote. According to Newman, Minns claimed One Nation’s payroll tax plan would cost $65 billion over the budget’s four-year forward estimates. Newman hit back that the budget papers put the whole payroll tax take over that period at $64.82 billion, so a partial cut couldn’t cost more than the entire tax. Both sides’ numbers deserve a close look once One Nation puts out a costed policy.

The Liberals’ problem

For the Liberals, the Markson poll is the worst of the lot. Eight seats would be a historic collapse for the party that governed NSW from 2011 to 2023.

Markson also reported on the relationship between the two opposition leaders. “Kellie Sloane and Mike Newman are on good terms, they’re in personal contact,” she said. “She doesn’t consider him her enemy. They both know the likely scenario is they can’t hope to become premier without each other.” But she added, “I’m told this isn’t a view shared by all of Kellie Sloane’s colleagues. Some would rather support Chris Minns than One Nation.”

That’s the same question hanging over the federal Liberals and the state party in Victoria. In South Australia, new Liberal president Alex Antic has already said the two parties will likely need some sort of understanding, as we covered in his comments on a Liberal-One Nation deal. In NSW the arithmetic of the Markson poll would flip that around. If it were right, One Nation wouldn’t need the Liberals at all.

How much to trust it

Here’s what we actually know. Two private polls, one from a Liberal-aligned firm and one from Labor, have been described by one journalist on one network. Neither has been published, and neither party has confirmed them on the record in what we’ve read. We don’t know who was asked, how many people, when, or in which seats. The seat projection is a model built on top of a poll, which piles on another layer of assumptions.

The published polls, which show their methods, have One Nation in the mid to high 20s and roughly level with Labor. That’s a remarkable spot for a party with no state MPs, and it’s enough to make One Nation a serious contender in March. On the public evidence, it’s not a guaranteed landslide.

What the leaks do show is that both major parties are taking the possibility seriously, and want everyone to know it. For Labor, the message to its own voters is that a protest vote could put One Nation in charge. For the Liberals, it’s a warning about what happens if they get squeezed. For One Nation, it’s free publicity and a story about momentum, six months out.

What’s next

The election is on 13 March 2027. It was due on 27 March, but the NSW Government brought it forward two weeks so it doesn’t clash with Easter. All 93 lower house seats are up, along with half the upper house.

Newman has said One Nation will run candidates in every lower house seat. The party still has to roll out most of them and publish costed policies. Resolve’s next NSW numbers are due in a couple of months, and the national polls will keep coming in the meantime. If the published figures start to look like Markson’s private ones, the talk of a One Nation premier will get a lot louder. If they don’t, the 48-seat projection will look like what it is for now, a leaked number with no method attached.