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The towns that line the Murray River helped propel One Nation to victory in the Farrer byelection. From outside Albury to the South Australian border, almost 600 kilometres to the west, all 15 polling booths dotted along the waterway turned orange on Saturday night.
It’s a trend that spells trouble for the Coalition on the other side of the state border.
Each of these towns that voted for Pauline Hanson’s party on Saturday are part of a community that straddles the Murray River. Thousands of voters on the Victorian side share the same grievances that drove their NSW counterparts to abandon the Coalition.
But it won’t end there, either. Support for One Nation could flow up and down the tributaries of the vast Murray-Darling river system that stretches through most of the Nationals’ rural and regional seats, running through Queensland, NSW and Victoria.
“We’re coming after those other seats,” Hanson declared on Saturday night. Now that Farrer has been the first to fall, the Coalition – and in particular the Nationals – is reckoning with the prospect of a wipeout.
Nationals seats at risk of a One Nation wave
The Murray River forms Farrer’s southern boundary. It is also the northern boundary of the Victorian seats of Nicholls, which is centred on Shepparton, and of Mallee and its main city of Mildura. Both are held by the Nationals.
Like Farrer, these seats contain significant numbers of people connected to the agriculture sector who are bitterly opposed to the irrigation water buyback programs executed by the federal government.
Indi, to the east, is the third Victorian electorate that borders Farrer – although it differs demographically because it includes the regional city of Wodonga, which adjoins Albury. Both are large population centres where people are generally younger, more educated and higher earning than in other towns.
Albury registered the highest vote for Climate 200-backed independent Michelle Milthorpe on Saturday. Indi is already held by an independent, Helen Haines, at the federal level. She is predicting an uprising against the Coalition in other regional electorates. “I think what this says is watch out,” she said on Saturday night.
Any uprising could extend further into NSW, too. To Farrer’s north lies the sprawling seat of Parkes, which covers the vast far west of the state, and the seat of Riverina, which is centred on the conservative inland city of Wagga Wagga.
There is a precedent for anti-establishment politics in this part of the state. Two elections ago, at the NSW poll, the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party claimed three seats in the state’s west, although all MPs quit to become independents. The state seat of Wagga is also held by an independent.
Further north again is the giant central Queensland seat of Maranoa, with Flynn and Capricornia stretching to the coast on its right.
These seats will be most vulnerable to the same combination of factors that swept the Coalition out of power on Saturday night in Farrer. The factors include the rising cost of living and falling profit margins for primary industries, and anger at perceived urban bias in distant policymakers. As well, the rise of mechanisation and shifting demographics are hollowing out many regional towns.
There’s also a demographic overlap: generally, their residents have lower median household incomes, a minority have a bachelor’s degree, and the vast majority were born in Australia.
Many of these voters were already warming to One Nation before last year’s late polling surge.
The polling booth for Yarroweyah, near the Murray in the Nationals-held seat of Nicholls, for example, registered 20 per cent first preferences for One Nation in May 2025. In the western NSW seat of Parkes, the Cumborah polling booth recorded a 37 per cent turnout for Hanson’s party.
And as Saturday night’s result showed, things can escalate quickly. One Nation recorded just over 6 per cent of the vote at last year’s election in Farrer – on par with the national average. A year later, this became 39 per cent.
Many MPs are pointing to the potency of byelections to argue that the same type of swing won’t play out at a general election – voters like to register their anger at byelections, when they know it won’t make a difference to the government of the day.
Still, in the Nationals, there is a growing acceptance that many of their once unassailable seats are now squarely in the sights of One Nation.
“The Nats are just about buggered. They [current MPs] are all pretty scared,” one former Nats MP said. “Between the independents and One Nation, there’s a real chance that they will be decimated, and particularly in NSW.”
Strong One Nation polling outside rural heartlands
Some of the strongest polling booth results for One Nation at last year’s election were much further from Farrer. They include the Queensland seat of Wright, south of Brisbane, which takes in Hanson’s home in the Scenic Rim area.
The Liberal-held electorate has a high proportion of Australian-born residents, a median income almost $200 a week lower than for the rest of Queensland, and a lower-than-average share of people with tertiary degrees.
Several booths there returned more than 20 per cent of first preferences for Hanson last year.
Victoria’s strongest seat for One Nation was Gippsland, in the state’s south-east: coal, farming and timber country held by Nationals deputy leader Darren Chester, where seven booths recorded a primary vote above 20 per cent for One Nation.
The highest primary vote was in Yallourn North, a town that lies in the shadow of a coal-fired power station that is being phased out and due to close in mid-2028. The booth’s 470 voters had a 31.3 per cent turnout for One Nation.
It was a similar story in the Labor-held seat of Hunter, NSW – a blue-collar area, dominated by mining and agriculture. It had 11 booths where more than one in five people voted for Hanson.
Hunter is held by Labor’s Dan Repacholi, but shares the same demographic factors as many regional Liberal and Nationals seats, including a high proportion of voters born in Australia and lower-than-average university attainment.
It is one of two electorates that has already become a two-party contest with One Nation. The other is former National leader David Littleproud’s seat of Maranoa. Following his retirement from the leadership this year, party figures think Maranoa could be the next to fall if he resigns.
Could One Nation take the cities?
One Nation’s ambitions aren’t contained to regional and rural Australia – according to MP Barnaby Joyce, western Sydney is next on the party’s agenda.
But on these urban outskirts – even if incomes and education attainment might be lower, as in other seats where One Nation is popular – the party faces other issues. A key one is the cultural background of voters.
Bruce, in Melbourne’s fast-growing east, is a strong example: it has lower average incomes than the rest of the city, and its share of people with a bachelor’s degree is also below the state average. That would suggest a foothold for One Nation.
But more than half of its residents were born overseas, while one in seven are Muslim. Almost two-thirds of residents had at least one parent born in another nation. It’s a similar story in seats such as McMahon (49 per cent born overseas), Watson (45 per cent) and Rankin (57 per cent).
As noted by one outer-suburban MP, these people have listened to Hanson’s hardline stance on foreigners and Muslims and Asians for years. They aren’t about to forget, the MP said.
Go deeper on One Nation’s huge win
- Rob Harris in Farrer: It took Pauline Hanson 30 years, and she’s only just getting started
- James Massola’s analysis: This is no ordinary victory — it’s a political earthquake
- History made: This seat has been held by the Coalition for all of its 77 years. Not anymore
- Full results: Every polling booth, every candidate across Farrer
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