Poll finds only 47% of Queensland supporters believe in party’s policies, as One Nation tipped for kingmaker status in state election

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

A majority of One Nation supporters do not believe in its policies but back Pauline Hanson’s party as the best of a bad bunch in the coming Queensland election race, according to a recent poll of almost 5,000 Brisbane voters.

One Nation, whose potential emergence as kingmaker is seen as the key factor in the state election, is the only one of four main parties to have fewer than half of its supporters declaring faith in its platform, according to a poll across five Brisbane seats last month.

The automated phone poll of 4,892 voters found 57% of One Nation voters considered it the “best of a bad set of options”, while only 47% “believe in the policies and positions of the party”.

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The Greens (74%), the LNP (65%) and Labor (62%) all had more than half their voters believing in their platforms.

And the Liberal National party’s (LNP) vulnerability on the issue of public service job cuts could play in One Nation’s favour in key regional seats, further polling by a union suggests.

This includes in the rural seat of Lockyer, where One Nation’s prime contender for its next parliamentary leader, Jim Savage, is in a knife-edge race with the LNP, according to the public sector union Together, which commissioned both surveys.

Together’s state secretary, Alex Scott, said: “A large part of One Nation’s vote is not based on people actually wanting to vote for them, it’s just they don’t want to vote for anybody else and they park their vote in One Nation.”

But this dynamic meant concerns about public job cuts under the LNP had “potential to cost them seats in the regions” if the opposition leader Tim Nicholls was not upfront about his plans in office.

Nicholls, who was treasurer in the former Newman government which Together says cut 22,000 public sector jobs in 2012 and 2013, has claimed the public service numbers restored under Labor are too large.

But he has declined to set a target for job cuts, while saying – as the LNP did under Newman before coming into office – that there will be no forced retrenchments.

“Clearly One Nation is running a reasonably populist line and job cuts are deeply unpopular in those seats which are potentially going to fall to One Nation,” Scott said.

“And therefore if Nicholls doesn’t address the issue of job cuts in a more open and real way, he’s exposing himself to losing seats on the right as well as in the middle.”

A 3 October poll of 672 voters in Lockyer had the LNP on a 51% to 49% lead over One Nation. This was after preferences from other parties flowed in One Nation’s favour by 51.6% to 48.4%.

But 82.4% of Lockyer voters thought major parties should announce any planned job cuts before the election, with 51.5% opposed to such cuts locally and 60.4% saying they would worsen the local community.

Savage did not respond to a request for comment on Sunday.

The sentiment against public job cuts was replicated in the seat of Gympie, north-west of the Sunshine Coast, traditionally a strong area of support for One Nation.

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There the LNP nevertheless held a handsome lead over Labor by picking up almost two-thirds of preferences, mainly from voters from One Nation, which took 22.2% of the primary vote.

Polls including another survey by Reachtel last month put One Nation’s primary vote at about 18% statewide, more than half the primary vote of both Labor (32%) and the LNP (30.6%).

One Nation is widely considered to be in contention for up to six seats, making the prospect of either Labor or the LNP winning an outright majority among 93 seats more difficult.