Australia’s far-right populist party One Nation overtook the ruling Labour party in a national opinion poll for the first time, buoyed by voter discontent over the centre-left government’s recent budget measures.
Primary support for One Nation rose four percentage points to 31% from a month earlier, according to a closely watched poll by Redbridge Group and Accent Research.
The ruling centre-left Labour party polled at 28%, down three points.
Support for the conservative coalition opposition fell two points to 20%.
The polling comes after the government’s May 12 budget introduced the biggest changes to property taxes in decades, to tackle intergenerational inequity.
The results suggest the proposed measures failed to win over voters, and were especially unpopular with the Gen X and Baby Boomer cohorts.
But it also appeared unpopular among younger Australians it aims to benefit.
Just 26% of Millennials and 13% of Gen-Z voters believed the budget would be good for them, it showed.
Labour was still ahead of One Nation, 51% to 49%, on a two-party-preferred basis, when respondents distribute preferences under Australia’s ranked-choice voting system.
The poll of 1,005 voters, with an error margin of 3.4%, was held between May 25 and May 28.
Since its 1997 launch, One Nation, led by Pauline Hanson, has had only a peripheral presence in Australia’s parliament.
But its recent resurgence came after it tapped into voter anxieties over high living costs, economic uncertainty and anti-immigration sentiment.
Reuters
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