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A version of this article was originally published by The Canberra Times.
Several surveys now have pegged the typical person crossing the Rubicon to One Nation as a white outer-suburban male, in his 50s.
He might possess a trade qualification and probably listens to talk-back radio during long commutes.
He may have voted Labor in the past, perhaps even habitually, but the bulk of these potential new converts have come from a longer-term alignment with the Liberal Party.
This latter cohort is perverse given that the Liberal Party is not in power. Ordinarily a protest vote is aimed at the government of the day. Opposition supporters usually feel even more inclined to stick with their standard choice as the most plausible means of unseating a government they despise.
Could this shift from inside-right to outside-right provide the clue to an even deeper fracture? Hold that thought.
Of course, with One Nation now edging consistently towards the 30 per cent range, it is more than just 55-year-old blokes vectoring to the populist fringe - there are also younger voters, women, even first and second-generation migrants.
We know this because some are bobbing up as One Nation candidates.
What virtually all have in common is a nagging sense that the country is being run for someone else.
These citizens feel left-behind - that they are being written out of an elitist Australian narrative which seems preoccupied with everything in the world, bar their declining material circumstances.
Nostalgically-minded, they struggle with flat wages, runaway prices, clogged roads and a general sense of economic and cultural precariousness.
A discourse of abstracts - the economy, the climate and kaleidoscopic identity - further their alienation. Abandoning the orthodoxy simply seems rational.
Recent elections (South Australia and the Farrer byelection) suggest this will become a bilateral problem - one that manifests initially on the political right, but which is coming for all aspects of the political establishment, including within Labor's traditional base.
Strategists in the major parties have cycled through various responses to this populist insurgency - after all, One Nation has been around the traps for close to three decades.
The earliest approach involved unrestrained contempt for Hansonism and her supporters, branding them racists, rednecks, simpletons and so on.
Unsurprisingly, on reflection, this demeaning approach did not coax them back.
When people are raging against the machine, banishing them from it may not operate as much like a penalty as intended. It can even become a rallying point.
Eventually the majors made a correction - or in the Liberals' case, a panicky over-correction. Through 2026, it is considered prudent to refer to the "legitimate grievances" of Hanson's burgeoning supporters.
Newer Labor state premiers such as Peter Malinauskas and Chris Minns openly adopted this respectful validation approach. The Coalition went further, agreeing to preference swaps while some MPs freelanced about future coalition arrangements to form government. There was even a merger idea floated.
In yesterday's Secret Harbour byelection, the Liberals were seen to run dead, with the state leader Basil Zempilas even opining that a win for One Nation would not be all bad.
What both parties miss is that neither blunt denial nor quisling appeasement will deflate the anti-establishment balloon.
More likely, the answer involves dialling down the inwardly referential machine behaviour and dialling up the effectiveness of outward-facing democratic representation.
Salvation, if it is to be had at all, begins with acknowledging that source of the problem isn't the populists per se, but a smug cartel culture that has given them so much to work with.
The gnawing sense that late-stage democracy serves special and sectional interests can only be debunked by ensuring it is recast to deliver for the wider population. The national interest must be more than a political term of art.
Right now, that would be a difficult argument to land with a lot of voters.
Consider the National Anti-Corruption Commission, new electoral funding laws, calls for a gas export tax, restrictions on gambling advertising, and crook GST allocations. In each case, sectional or political self-interest seems to trump any public clamour for change.
Because it was politicians and public officials who were most vulnerable to public proceedings, the NACC was neutered from its inception. A major-party stitch-up gave it all the cut-through of a doona.
Electoral funding laws exhibit a similar story of the major parties agreeing on a formula that just happens to shield them while making it harder for independents and new competitors. Who knew?
With online gambling ads, vast public support was nothing against the powerful lobbyists for a pernicious industry.
Lobbyists also helped to scupper a broad cross-section of voters and their representatives backing a tax on gas exports. An idea considered worthy cannot even make it to serious parliamentary consideration.
In the case of the GST distribution, taxpayers fund both the independent Productivity Commission study that finds expensive distortions favouring WA, and the federal government which summarily dismisses the report for fear of losing seats in the west.
One Nation may be unconscionable, but as Hanson would say, voters "have had a gutful" of parties acting fastest when defending their own patch.
Mark Kenny is the Director of the ANU Australian Studies Institute and host of the Democracy Sausage podcast.