If Hanson fades, this four-week stretch will be remembered for the mistakes that brought her down

After months basking in the warmth of poll success and byelection glory, Pauline Hanson had a choice as winter set in.

All major polls showed One Nation ahead of not just the Coalition, but Labor as well. She could have consolidated her position. Perhaps released a cost-of-living policy.

But she chose to shift from the sidelines, able to criticise the establishment without offering solutions, on to the pitch where she and her colleagues were seemingly intent on being as subversive as possible.

The results from the latest Resolve Political Monitor represent a notable shift away from One Nation in just one month. The shine has come off. Hanson remains in a compelling position the commentariat didn’t see coming a year ago, but if this is the start of a trend, the past few weeks will be remembered as a pivotal period of miscalculation.

Consider the events from the start of June. Barnaby Joyce joined that anti-abortion movement Peter Dutton knew was a dead-end. Hanson called employees, a core part of her suburban base, lazy in a National Press Club address on June 17. In the same speech, she railed against paid parental leave and argued for a monoculture that she kept having to redefine.

Hardline comments on childcare, abortion and wages are still reverberating online, according to major party hardheads tracking public sentiment.

In July, instead of sticking around over winter to regain faith, Joyce and then Hanson jetted off to London for a Euro summer. Their travel has Coalition MPs wondering if Hanson and company are high on their own supply. (Coalition frontbencher Brigid McKenzie has also been in London on the conservative conference circuit.)

Hanson’s travel itinerary is revealing. So far, she has met with Rupert Lowe, an MP who was booted from Reform UK and created Restore Britain, a party to the right of Nigel Farage’s. She’s also walked the streets with Tommy Robinson, the anti-Islam extremist criminal disavowed by Farage and labelled a thug by Australian conservative Andrew Bolt.

These head-scratchers suggest Hanson is operating without much restraint and hasn’t shifted her gaze to the voters outside her core One Nation bloc. Australians may want a system shake-up, but the survey results indicate quite a few of the disaffected are turning away from Hanson.

One Nation lost three points on its primary vote, from 29 down to 26. The vote transferred neatly to the Coalition, which is up from 20 to 23 (most other polls have not yet shown an uptick in the Coalition vote). At the same time, only 25 per cent of people surveyed prefer Hanson to be the prime minister, plummeting from 33 last month. And 19 per cent think One Nation will win the next election, down from 28.

These are big shifts, well outside the 2 per cent margin of error for the poll of 2250 Australians taken last week.

Hanson’s likeability is still positive at +3, but has dropped 11 points in a month. Her favorability has dipped to the same level as December, when the Bondi massacre helped fuel her rise over summer.

The horror of Bondi, the controversial budget and the triumphant Farrer byelection all buoyed One Nation in the polls.

This survey is significant in the battle for ascendancy on the centre-right but demonstrates Labor would still easily win an election, even with a low 28 per cent primary vote.

Anger about Labor’s unpopular budget has dulled. Anthony Albanese’s personal ratings, much worse than Hanson’s, started to recover in this survey.

Bruised in the budget’s aftermath, Albanese has passed his contentious bills and moved on to announcing wins in the Pacific and hosting a feel-good visit from Indian leader Narendra Modi.

Angus Taylor, battered in the polls since he seized the leadership, gets a glimmer of hope.

Taylor finally got his fangs out in the fight with Hanson last week, using a speech to cast her party as reckless. But there’s increasing chatter about Andrew Hastie’s ambitions. And if the comments on Taylor’s social media clips bagging Hanson are anything to go by, the One Nation train still has steam.

The rise of One Nation is a disaster for the Coalition despite Hanson’s tricky claim, repeated from London, that she is keen to work with Taylor. But if his team can develop a first-preference edge over her party, the growth of the combined conservative vote could make the Coalition competitive on a two-party measure.

The past month suggests that while One Nation has broken into the mainstream as the Coalition and Labor faltered, a leopard doesn’t change its spots. Voters shouldn’t expect a hard pivot when Hanson returns from London, and the question will be whether this drop is a blip or the start of a bigger correction.

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