A state election may prove to be a litmus test for the nation on whether One Nation's rising popularity translates into votes.
Opinion polls are pointing to a seismic shift in national politics ahead of the South Australian election.
A YouGov-Advertiser poll and Newspoll published on Friday both pointed to a landslide election win for the SA Labor government on March 21.
Both polls also showed the Liberal Party fighting for survival against One Nation, but there were important differences in the underlying numbers.
Flinders University public policy associate lecturer Josh Sunman said the polls “hit like a bomb”, describing it as “the weirdest election I’ve ever seen”.
“This is bizarre, and it's really fascinating to see what this means for the future, not just South Australian but Australian politics,” he said.
“We're a test case to see if One Nation can break through - the last time it wasn't Liberal or Labor second in any Australian election was the Northern Territory in 1974.
“If that were to happen here, it would be … a pretty seismic shift in how we think about Australian politics, how we think about the competitive dynamics of it.”
Campaigning begins in earnest on Saturday, as the government moves into caretaker mode.
The YouGov-Advertiser poll found if an election was held on Friday, Labor would win easily with 37 per cent of the primary vote, ahead of One Nation at 22 per cent and the Liberals on 20 per cent.
A key poll finding was 44 per cent of voters viewed the Liberals as a fringe party not capable of governing, while 84 per cent viewed Labor as a mainstream party.
It also found Peter Malinauskas was the preferred premier (64 per cent) to Liberal leader Ashton Hurn (20 per cent).
Mrs Hurn was thrust into the Liberal leadership in December, left to pick up the pieces of a party that failed to recover after Labor turfed it out in 2022, winning 27 lower house seats to 16.
The Newspoll showed an even wider gap between the parties, with Labor on 44 per cent of the primary vote, One Nation at 24 per cent, the Liberals on 14 per cent and the Greens on 12 per cent.
The poll found the Liberals could fail to hold any of their 13 seats if the results were replicated on election day.
“For Labor, the difference is how much icing they have on their cake, and for the Liberal Party, the question is, do they survive?” Mr Sunman said.
“The Newspoll numbers, you're looking at potentially zero Liberals and a One Nation opposition, but if you take the YouGov numbers, you're looking at One Nation and the Liberals kind of scrapping it out.”
One Nation had mounted a successful recruitment campaign, with 46 candidates announced and on the ground, contrasting with 2018, when it failed to register its candidates in time for the election.
“That's an incredible feat for them,” Mr Sunman said.
“But there's two schools of thoughts here - do One Nation try to break through with a bold policy commitment or is it better for One Nation just to shut up?"
