Pauline Hanson Says The Media Is Covering Up A Bonza One Nation WA Result

Two things worth mentioning right off the damn bat: yes, One Nation didn’t do quite as well in Western Australia as many anticipated, but no, that doesn’t mean they’re dead in the water.

But nevertheless, Pauline Hanson is at the battlements today saying that the media are covering up a “fantastic” result for One Nation in WA, and that she expects the party will pick up as many as five upper house seats. It’s possible, but the ABC election counter says its far more likely they’ll end up with two.

She also claimed that the party had polled 9.1 percent of the vote “across the board.” This is not strictly true – they polled 4.7 percent across the board, but managed to hit 8.1 percent in the seats they actually ran in. And honestly, that’s probably a more useful metric if we’re predicting future support, as the party didn’t run in all seats.
Hanson appeared on Sunrise this morning, calling it a fantastic result – despite earlier predictions that they’d power through the upper house and pick up a few lower house seats along the way:
We had a fantastic result Remember, we have been in this for 50 days and we had no structure in the state. We’ve just got registered and we got 50 candidates to stand. To get this sort of result is fantastic. I’m thrilled about it. The media are not letting you know the results that we have got.

Along with many other commentators, Hanson believes it was the preference deal they knocked together with the Liberals which doomed them, as it drained them of populist appeal they might otherwise have had.

Barnaby Joyce, who obviously is not so keen on the Liberals doing preference deals with anyone bar the Nationals, echoed that sentiment:
All the imbroglio with regards to preferences means people start to over-assess and exaggerate what they think the support is of their new partner and they also just confuse their constituencies. It’s in the Liberal Party’s interests to be close to the National Party, and it’s in the National Party’s interests to be close to the Liberal Party.
Photo: Getty Images.

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