On Monday I argued the South Australian result was not just a Labor triumph but a warning. The numbers in the SA upper house have now firmed up, and the warning is louder.
As of Tuesday night, One Nation has won one seat in the Lower House and is currently leading the count in three more. In the South Australian Legislative Council, it looks like they will win three seats of the eleven that went to the election. Cory Bernardi, who leads the state party, is confirmed as one of them, alongside Carlos Quaremba and Rebecca Hewett.
What makes this more striking is the starting point: One Nation held one upper house seat from the 2022 election, held by Sarah Game, but she quit the party before 2026 and sat as an independent. So, One Nation entered Saturday’s election with zero sitting upper house members. They rebuilt from nothing and won three seats on the strength of a 23.8% primary vote in the Legislative Council alone.
So, Peter Malinauskas won the lower house in a landslide and simultaneously the balance of power in the Legislative Council has fallen to One Nation to review every piece of legislation he proposes. That is the structural reality of what a fragmented primary vote produces.
NSW: Zero seats, 23% of the vote
One Nation currently holds zero seats in the NSW upper house. They won three Legislative Council seats at the 2023 election, but all three members have since defected from the party and now sit as independents. By the time the 2027 election arrives, One Nation will have had no sitting representatives in NSW parliament for years. No platform. No profile. No incumbency advantage and yet they are polling at 23% statewide.
The SA result proved that none of those things matter when the discontent is structural. One Nation entered that election with zero upper house members and no lower house presence. This is exactly the same position as One Nation in NSW will be in come 2027.
Voters are not looking for a credible alternative government. They are looking for somewhere to put their frustration.
The NSW upper house math is straightforward and significant. At the 2027 election, 21 of the 42 Legislative Council seats will be contested. The quota for each seat is approximately 4.5%. On 23% of the primary vote, a well-run One Nation ticket is mathematically positioned to win four, possibly five, upper house seats. They won two in 2023 on a lower vote but had three members as Mark Latham resigned halfway through his eight-year term and gifted the remaining four years to former Labor MP Tania Mihailuk. Starting from zero and landing four or five seats would likely also give them crossbench power over every bill Chris Minns sends to the upper house. It would be the most significant shift in NSW parliamentary balance in a generation.
That leaves us with the question of the lower house. NSW is the only state with Optional Preferential Voting, meaning you don’t need to number every candidate. You could just vote one and not pass your preference on to any other candidate. This strongly favours the party who has the highest primary vote.
If Labor leads, and One Nation gets a higher primary than the Coalition, it could lead to an even bigger Labor landslide than what we just witnessed in South Australia despite a swing against the Government on primaries.
Where will One Nation surge in NSW?
Kos Samaras of Redbridge said One demographic profile of where One Nation does well is “outer-suburban communities under mortgage and rental stress, lower formal education attainment, industrial and logistics employment belts, and regional towns carrying a deep anti-establishment sentiment. Education levels were the strongest single predictor of where the One Nation surge was largest.”
Using the 2021 ABS census electorate profiles, the communities most likely to produce a One Nation surge are identifiable right now, and they concentrate in three geographic clusters.
The Hunter Valley is the most exposed
Cessnock ranks first in the entire state for trade qualifications, with 29.6% of residents holding one. Its Year 12 completion rate of 34.9% is the second lowest in NSW. One-parent families rank fifth statewide. Maitland sits alongside it with the third-highest trade qualification rate in NSW and Year 12 completion of just 41.8%, ranking 75th of 93 electorates. Upper Hunter ranks second in the state for trade qualifications and 86th for Year 12 completion. These are Labor and National seats that demographically mirror the SA electorates where One Nation led on primary votes last Saturday.
The Central Coast is the second cluster
Wyong has a no-post-school qualifications rate of 42.8%, 13th highest in NSW, with Year 12 completion ranking 81st in the state and 41.5% of renters paying more than 30% of their income in rent. The Entrance sits alongside it with the 13th highest rental stress in NSW. Cost of living is not an abstraction in these communities. It is the organising fact of daily life.
The third cluster is outer south-western Sydney
Campbelltown has the second-highest single-parent family rate in NSW, ranks tenth for no post-school qualifications and carries significant mortgage stress. Wollondilly and Camden sit at the rural-suburban fringe where the growth corridors meet communities that feel left behind by the pace of change around them. These are not just outer-suburban statistics. They are the demographics of alienation.
This is not to say One Nation won’t poll well in other areas. For this piece I have only presented these three clusters.
The first test comes on 9 May
None of this is inevitable. One Nation still needs to recruit candidates, build a NSW-specific profile, and convert polling into an organised campaign. The resignation of Susan Ley from the Federal parliament has caused the Farrer by-election on 9 May. This is the next test of whether Saturday’s SA result has momentum or was a one-state event. I think it’s the former.
Farrer covers a large swathe of southern NSW, and One Nation is polling at close to 29% in the seat, ten points clear of the Liberal candidate and six points ahead of the independent. A strong result would signal that the Hunter, Central Coast and outer south-western Sydney are genuinely in play and very likely other communities across the state.
The discontent is measurable. And the SA blueprint has just been published in real time.
Finally, my friends who know me know my love of the GWS Giants. So, I’ll leave you with this. In 2026 it looks like the Orange Tsunami is building in the electorate stronger than on the footy field.
Chris Hall is CEO, Primary Comms Group, and Chair at Sport NSW
