Pauline hanson, personality, and electoral fortunes

Abstract

Queensland Senator Pauline Hanson is acknowledged globally as the quintessential populist leader, not for her commitment to populist ideology, but because of her dictatorial control and personality-based leadership of the party. But what are people voting for? Is it populism-themovement intractably associated with right-wing nationalism, hatred, and bigotry? Is it populist campaigning, a framing tactic of posing the candidate as being at one with the ordinary people, in opposition to a (stylized) undemocratic and self-serving elite, irrespective of ideology or partisan leaning? Or is it the rise of the personality or celebrity candidate, who appeals personally to voters more than, and differently from, any message from a political party or ideology? Election results are not always clear, as a candidate may attract voters for all these, or indeed other, reasons, so trying to interpret meaning from vote data is ambiguous at best. To know what voters are voting for, we must determine vote causality. This chapter looks at the difference between populism, populist campaigns, and personality candidates, examines whether there is evidence of support for any of them (with specific reference to Pauline Hanson’s One Nation) by comparing 2013 and 2016 federal election Senate results, and discusses the likely performance of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation in the upcoming federal election.