The long rebuild.

One Nation's first surge remains the benchmark against which its current position is measured.

At the 1998 federal election the party recorded the third-highest vote count in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, and it polled second at the 1998 Queensland state election — yet converted that support into a single Senate seat federally. The lesson of 1998, which recurs throughout this series, is that raw vote share and institutional power are different quantities in Australia's electoral system.

The subsequent two decades were defined by decline, splits and partial recovery. Pauline Hanson's return to the leadership preceded a national resurgence at the 2016 federal election, where the party secured four Senate positions, and One Nation maintained a federal Senate presence at each election that followed despite persistent parliamentary turnover.

The May 2025 federal election was, on its face, a Labor landslide — 94 House seats, the largest single-party total in Australian history, on a two-party-preferred vote of 55.2 per cent. The Liberal Party recorded its worst federal result by vote share since its 1944 formation.

Within that result sat the numbers that mattered for One Nation: 6.4 per cent of the national House vote — the party's second-best lower house result since its inception — Senate representation doubled to four, including seats won in New South Wales and Western Australia, the first time the party had won outside Queensland at a half-Senate election; and a place in the final three candidates of the preference distribution in 26 House seats, reaching the final two in Hunter (NSW) and Maranoa (Qld).

Three developments then compounded in quick succession — a rebrand, a defection, and an external shock. Eight months after polling 6.4 per cent, One Nation stood at 23 per cent of the national primary vote — level with the entire Liberal–National Coalition.

Polling surges for minor parties are common; most decay. Three features distinguished this one.