By STEFAN BRADLEY
A SHOCK major opinion poll from the weekend forecasts that if an election was held today, Member for Gippsland Darren Chester would lose his seat alongside fellow Coalition MP Mary Aldred in the neighbouring seat of Monash – with both divisions falling to One Nation.
The Coalition would be left with seven-to-21 seats, with 12 the most likely scenario. Under the seven and 12 seat scenarios, there are no Nationals MPs.
The poll’s most likely scenario suggests the probability of Mr Chester losing Gippsland to One Nation as 73 per cent, but he fares better than Ms Aldred in Monash, a Liberal, who had a 98 per cent chance of being defeated by the surging conservative party.
The poll by Redbridge Group and Accent Research, published by the Australian Financial Review Weekend, predicts One Nation will win 53 seats and become the official opposition, with Labor to remain in majority government with 76 seats.
These are the ‘median seat predictions’, with Labor’s worst scenario being a minority government with 70 seats, and a clear majority with 82 – but a loss of 12 seats from their current 94 regardless. One Nation could reach a high of 59 seats and a low of 46.
The Multilevel Regression with Post-stratification research (MRP) sampled 6015 voters between April 29 and May 14, 2026 – the federal budget was handed down the evening of May 12. An MRP is different from a regular opinion poll in that it looks at trends and applies them to individual seats, but it does not factor in candidate or campaign quality.
Market research and data analyst firm YouGov was one of the closest to predicting the May 2025 election, with its final poll estimating Labor acquiring 84 seats and the Coalition plummeting to 47.
However, just months out in February 2025, YouGov’s modelling suggested the Coalition, led by then Liberal leader Peter Dutton, would be most likely to win 73 seats, just three seats shy of a majority, giving Mr Dutton a path to become Prime Minister in a minority government. Mr Dutton ended up losing his seat at the election and the Coalition was reduced to 43 seats. Two of those seats are now in One Nation’s hands, including Farrer, which the party recently took off the Coalition’s hands in a by-election on May 9. The other is held by Barnaby Joyce, who defected from the Nationals earlier this year.
As reported by the Express last week, Mr Chester, who is deputy leader of the Nationals, said the Coalition would need to take some time in their respective party rooms to reflect on the overall result in Farrer.
“There was an overwhelming mood for change in the Farrer by-election as a result of the anger and frustration voters were feeling with the way they have been left behind by the Labor Party,” Mr Chester said.
Both Gippsland and Farrer are very large rural seats that have historically been safe for the Coalition.
But Mr Chester said the divisions are very different and it was risky to draw too many conclusions from a by-election.
Greg Hansford from Newborough ran in Gippsland for One Nation at the 2025 federal election, achieving the party’s best result in Victoria, with more than 14 per cent primary vote. He said “more and more people are becoming disenchanted with what the Coalition have to up and offer, and in particular the Labor Party”.
The Redbridge Group and Accent Research poll, alongside electoral results in the South Australian election and the Farrer by-election, show that Australian politics has rapidly changed in the year since the 2025 election. But as shown in the above mentioned YouGov polling, the landscape can change within months. Has One Nation peaked or is there even more potential growth? Will time not be kind to Labor’s recent federal budget?
The next federal election is likely to be called in early 2028, with the latest possible date for it to be held May 20, just under two years from now.
