Tilt[ed.13, 2026]
On Saturday, One Nation won its first lower house seat in the Federal Parliament. It’s the latest domino to fall in an electoral re-alignment that is currently reshaping the right of Australian politics.
To a lot of us, the pace and significance of this shift has been surprising. Even at last year’s federal election, One Nation only managed a +1.44% swing amidst a global trend towards populist right wing parties. If you asked me 12 months ago, I would have argued that we were well placed to avoid the kind of politics that has become mainstream in the US, parts of Europe and beyond.
So what did I get wrong?
When we say ‘re-alignment’, I think we assume that people switch - in a kind of binary way - from one party to another. And yes, when they actually go to vote, they do. But I think I missed what I now suspect is driving the re-alignment: the much less binary perceptions of party brands.
The problem with how we measure political support
Political parties are, of course, coordinated groups of people who share roughly aligned views on policy and ideology. But for most voters, they’re brands. That’s because, like buying deodorant, most people treat voting as a low-consideration decision. (ICYMI, you can read more about this idea here)
To take this idea one step further, how you feel about a brand isn’t a binary love or hate. There’s brands you love (Mitchum), brands you feel very little towards (Rexona), brands you'd switch to in a pinch (Dove) and brands that you couldn’t bring yourself to use or be seen buying (Lynx). Brand love exists on a spectrum, and where you sit on that spectrum shapes your behaviour in ways that go far beyond a single transaction. How much does the price have to rise before you switch? How much bad press do you absorb before you start quietly looking elsewhere?
Political brands work the same way.