SYDNEY, June 1 (Reuters) – Australia’s far-right populist party One Nation overtook the ruling Labor party in a national opinion poll for the first time, buoyed by voter discontent over the centre-left government’s recent budget measures.
• Primary support for One Nation rose four percentage points to 31% from a month earlier, according to a closely watched poll by Redbridge Group and Accent Research.
• The ruling centre-left Labor party polled at 28%, down three points.
• Support for the conservative coalition opposition fell two points to 20%.
• The polling comes after the government’s May 12 budget introduced the biggest changes to property taxes in decades, to tackle intergenerational inequity.
• The results suggest the proposed measures failed to win over voters, and were especially unpopular with the Gen X and Baby Boomer cohorts.
• But it also appeared unpopular among younger Australians it aims to benefit.
• Just 26% of Millennials and 13% of Gen-Z voters believed the budget would be good for them, it showed.
• Labor was still ahead of One Nation 51% to 49% on a two-party-preferred basis, when respondents distribute preferences under Australia’s ranked-choice voting system.
• The poll of 1,005 voters, with an error margin of 3.4%, was held between May 25 and May 28.
• Since its 1997 launch, One Nation, led by Pauline Hanson, has had only a peripheral presence in Australia’s parliament.
• But its recent resurgence came after it tapped into voter anxieties over high living costs, economic uncertainty and anti-immigration sentiment.
(Reporting by Christine Chen in Sydney; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
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