One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce has brushed off the party’s biggest polling blow in months after Pauline Hanson suffered an eight-point tumble in the preferred prime minister contest and support for her party fell for the first time after a four-month run of growth.

The latest Resolve Political Monitor put One Nation on 26 per cent of the primary vote, down three percentage points from its extraordinary high of 29 per cent.

Labor remained steady on 28 per cent and returned to first place, while the Coalition recovered three points to reach 23 per cent. The Greens were unchanged on 12 per cent.

The leadership numbers were more painful for Hanson.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese climbed four points to 33 per cent as preferred prime minister, reclaiming the lead after Hanson briefly overtook him in the previous survey.

Hanson fell from 33 per cent to 25 per cent.

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor also improved, rising five points from 16 per cent to 21 per cent.

For a party that had spent months defying predictions of a polling ceiling, the result represents the clearest evidence yet that increased scrutiny of One Nation and its leader may be having an effect.

Joyce, however, was not prepared to treat the result as a political turning point.

“Polls are polls,” he said.

“They’re an indicator, they’re not a vote.”

The former deputy prime minister, who joined One Nation after leaving the Nationals, argued Hanson remained an unusually direct political communicator whose positions resonated with Australians concerned about rapid cultural and economic change.

His response reflects the calculation now facing One Nation.

The party can acknowledge that its extraordinary surge has slowed, or it can argue that the same unresolved voter frustrations that drove Hanson from the political margins to 29 per cent have not disappeared because of one bad survey.

One Nation’s four-month growth streak has ended

The latest Resolve result is significant because of the momentum that preceded it.

One Nation had recorded four consecutive months of growth before reaching 29 per cent of the primary vote in June.

At that level, the party had overtaken both Labor and the Coalition.

Hanson had also achieved something almost unimaginable in Australian federal politics only a year earlier: she moved ahead of the sitting prime minister in a major preferred prime minister poll.

Her June result placed her on 33 per cent, compared with Albanese on 29 per cent and Taylor on 16 per cent.

The July numbers reverse both leads.

Labor is again ahead on primary support and Albanese has reclaimed the preferred prime minister advantage.

Polling also showed fewer Australians now expect One Nation to form government.

Thirty-five per cent of respondents expected Albanese to remain in The Lodge, while 19 per cent believed One Nation would win power and 18 per cent expected a Coalition government.

The shift does not erase One Nation’s growth.

It does, however, suggest that some voters who were prepared to consider Hanson during the party’s rapid rise are now reconsidering their support.

Resolve pollster Jim Reed said the losses were particularly noticeable among women and immigrant voters.

That is a major warning for One Nation because those groups were part of the party’s expansion beyond its traditional political base.

Hanson’s “monoculture” push appears to have tested her broader coalition

One Nation’s recent success was built partly on issues where the party found support far beyond its historic base.

Immigration levels, housing pressure, government spending, the cost of living and the National Disability Insurance Scheme all gave Hanson opportunities to appeal to voters frustrated with Labor and the Coalition.

Some migrant voters also expressed concern about the pace of future immigration and its impact on housing and infrastructure.

Reed previously described this phenomenon as a “drawbridge effect” — where people who have already migrated to Australia may themselves support lower future migration.

But Hanson’s recent promotion of an Australian “monoculture” appears to have exposed the limits of that support.

The Resolve poll found 39 per cent of respondents disagreed with the proposition that Australia would be better off as a monocultural society.

Only 33 per cent agreed.

Hanson’s comments about multiculturalism were followed by renewed scrutiny of One Nation’s positions on abortion and parental leave.

Reed said voters had initially been attracted to some of Hanson’s positions on immigration, the NDIS and economic issues but were now being exposed to a broader range of One Nation policies.

That is the unavoidable consequence of becoming a serious national political force.

A minor party can spend years campaigning almost exclusively on the issues where it is strongest.

A party polling close to 30 per cent is judged differently.

Voters begin asking what it would do with the economy, workplace law, health, education, foreign policy and social policy.

Journalists examine old statements.

Political opponents cost policies and identify internal contradictions.

Every candidate becomes more important because voters begin imagining the party with a large parliamentary presence rather than a handful of senators.

One Nation’s surge has therefore created the scrutiny that comes with its own success.

Joyce defends the need for cultural “guardrails”

Joyce defended the broader concern behind Hanson’s cultural arguments, saying Australia needed “guardrails” around the way people interact within society.

“I think what people want is a culture where there are guardrails that keep us all in the same paddock,” Joyce said.

He argued those guardrails should allow Australians to interact while respecting each other’s liberties and views.

Joyce also defended Hanson’s political style.

“I think she has a very straightforward way of expressing herself,” he said.

“You know exactly where Pauline is coming from.”

That directness has always been central to Hanson’s political appeal.

Supporters view her as a politician willing to say publicly what others discuss privately.

Critics argue the same style can reduce complex social and economic questions to provocative slogans.

For One Nation, the latest poll raises the question of whether Hanson’s directness is still attracting more voters than it is alienating.

At 29 per cent, the answer appeared obvious.

At 26 per cent, the equation becomes more complicated.

One Nation remains extraordinarily strong by its own historical standards, but its growth is no longer moving in only one direction.

Joyce avoids Hanson parental leave controversy

Hanson’s recent comments about parental leave have also attracted criticism.

She questioned whether taxpayers should fund parental leave for some women and argued people should take greater responsibility for their personal choices.

The comments were widely criticised and contributed to a broader debate about One Nation’s appeal among female voters.

When asked whether the parental leave controversy may have contributed to the party’s polling decline, Joyce did not directly engage with the issue.

He instead returned to his argument that polling was only an indicator of public sentiment.

The avoidance is politically notable.

One Nation’s loss of support among women is one of the clearest demographic movements identified in the latest Resolve results.

If the party wants to determine whether its decline is temporary, it will need to understand why those voters moved away.

Hanson’s comments on multiculturalism may explain part of the fall among immigrant voters.

Her positions on abortion and parental leave may have created concerns among some women.

It is also possible that the party’s polling peak simply included a group of soft protest voters who were never firmly committed to One Nation.

One survey cannot establish the precise balance between those explanations.

But the pattern gives the party a clear warning.

The broader One Nation’s voter coalition becomes, the more difficult it is to maintain positions that appeal strongly to one group without alienating another.

The Coalition has finally recovered some ground

The latest polling also offers Angus Taylor his first clear sign that the Coalition’s increasingly aggressive approach towards One Nation may be producing a political return.

The Coalition gained three points to reach 23 per cent.

Taylor’s preferred prime minister rating increased from 16 per cent to 21 per cent.

Those numbers remain weak by the historical standards of a major opposition party.

But the direction of movement matters.

Taylor has recently attacked One Nation’s economic credibility, arguing that four of its policies alone could cost approximately $1 trillion over a decade.

He has described the party as a “column of smoke” and accused it of offering expensive promises without a credible plan to pay for them.

Hanson responded by urging Taylor to stop attacking One Nation and work with her to defeat Labor and the Greens.

The strategic disagreement is now central to conservative politics.

Hanson wants the Coalition to treat One Nation as a potential partner in a broader anti-Labor political movement.

Taylor has instead attempted to re-establish the Coalition as the credible party of government on the centre-right.

If One Nation continues falling while the Coalition rises, Taylor will argue his approach is working.

If Hanson stabilises above the Coalition, the pressure on Taylor will intensify.

One Nation is still polling more than four times its 2025 election vote

The most important context for the latest fall is where One Nation started.

At the 2025 federal election, the Australian Electoral Commission recorded One Nation on 6.40 per cent of House of Representatives first preferences.

The party is now polling at 26 per cent in Resolve.

That is more than four times its federal election primary vote.

Even after its biggest polling setback in months, One Nation remains three points ahead of the Coalition in the latest Resolve survey.

This is why Joyce can dismiss suggestions that the party’s political moment has ended.

A three-point decline from 29 per cent to 26 per cent is damaging.

A party on 26 per cent is still a major electoral threat.

The comparison with the 2025 election also highlights the speed of Australia’s political realignment.

Millions of voters who supported Labor, the Coalition or other parties at the last election are now telling pollsters they would give their first preference to One Nation.

The durability of that support remains uncertain.

But it cannot be dismissed as Hanson’s traditional base alone.

Turning national support into House seats remains One Nation’s biggest challenge

One Nation’s polling strength creates a new problem for election analysts because Australia’s preferential voting system does not convert national primary vote percentages directly into seats.

A party can poll strongly across the country and still struggle to win individual electorates if its support is spread too evenly.

To win a House of Representatives seat, a candidate ultimately needs more than 50 per cent of the formal vote after preferences are distributed.

One Nation could therefore receive 20 or 25 per cent of first preferences in dozens of seats without winning them.

But new analysis suggests the party’s surge could fundamentally change the final stages of counts across the country.

Electoral analysts estimate One Nation could be among the final three candidates in more than 100 electorates if current polling strength were reflected at an election.

At the last federal election, the party was among the final three in only 26 seats.

That shift would push Australian politics into largely unknown territory.

Traditional election modelling is built around Labor-versus-Coalition contests.

Preference assumptions rely heavily on decades of voting behaviour involving those two major political blocs.

A three-way contest involving One Nation on a large primary vote is different.

Coalition preferences could become decisive in seats where One Nation finishes ahead of the Liberal or National candidate.

One Nation preferences could decide Labor-Coalition contests elsewhere.

How-to-vote cards, voter preference behaviour and the geographic concentration of Hanson’s support would all become critical.

Experts warn against declaring the Hanson wave over

The Australia Institute’s chief political analyst Amy Remeikis has warned that One Nation’s decline should not automatically be interpreted as the end of the party’s rise.

On the current numbers, One Nation could still take seats from the Coalition.

The party may not win enough electorates to dominate parliament, but it could significantly alter the balance of conservative representation.

That outcome would create a particularly difficult scenario for the Coalition.

If Hanson takes regional and outer-metropolitan seats from Liberal and National candidates without winning enough seats to form government, Labor could emerge as the beneficiary of a fragmented right.

The Coalition therefore cannot judge One Nation’s threat solely by whether Hanson has a realistic path to The Lodge.

A party does not need to form government to transform Australian politics.

It only needs to defeat enough sitting MPs, change preference flows and force its rivals to adjust their policies.

One Nation has already influenced the national debate on immigration, housing, the NDIS and government spending.

Its polling surge has forced the Coalition to publicly confront a party that once occupied a much smaller part of the conservative electorate.

One bad poll does not answer the biggest question

Joyce is correct about one basic fact.

A poll is not a vote.

Opinion polls measure voter intention at a particular moment and are affected by methodology, sampling and the political events dominating public attention.

The next election will be decided by actual ballots in individual electorates under Australia’s preferential voting system.

But polls are not meaningless either.

They influence party strategy, media scrutiny, candidate recruitment and political confidence.

A sustained decline across multiple polls would be a serious problem for Hanson.

The latest Resolve result also follows other polling showing One Nation slipping from recent highs.

That makes the next several surveys particularly important.

If One Nation falls again, the July result may be remembered as the beginning of a broader retreat.

If the party stabilises in the low-to-mid 20s, the political crisis facing the Coalition remains almost entirely intact.

And if Hanson resumes her growth, the current fall will look like a temporary correction after an unusually rapid surge.

The demographic movements may be even more important than the headline primary vote.

One Nation needs to determine whether women and immigrant voters have permanently rejected aspects of Hanson’s broader platform or merely shifted temporarily during a period of intense controversy.

The answer will help determine whether the party has built a durable national coalition or an unstable alliance of protest voters united by a limited group of issues.

For now, One Nation has suffered real polling pain.

Hanson has lost eight points as preferred prime minister.

Her party’s four-month growth streak has ended.

Labor is back in front and the Coalition has recovered ground.

But One Nation remains on 26 per cent — more than four times the primary vote it received at the last federal election and still ahead of the Coalition in the latest Resolve poll.

Joyce may be brushing off the result.

The major parties cannot afford to do the same.