Polls taken ahead of the Victorian state election — now about five weeks out — show a race without a clear frontrunner, while One Nation has accumulated enough voter support to influence electorates that had previously been outside its competitive range.

Figures from a Roy Morgan poll put Labor heading toward 40 seats and the Coalition toward 31, a notable shift from the 56 and 28 seats each party held after the 2022 state election. Roy Morgan polling placed One Nation — the party of Senator Pauline Hanson, running in Victoria under Warren Pickering's leadership — on a trajectory toward 11 lower house seats, a tally that would represent a complete turnaround from the party's nil return at the 2022 election. Projections pointed to the Greens picking up two additional seats, bringing their total from four to six.

Roy Morgan's polling data indicated that One Nation's electoral prospects extended into metropolitan and suburban territory beyond its established regional base, with the firm's analysis noting that seat-by-seat breakdowns across rural and regional Victoria showed voter profiles closely matching demographics where the party had recorded growing support, while also pointing to a broader geographic spread of competitive opportunities that the traditional rural stronghold framing no longer fully captured.

Outer metropolitan and regional growth areas also recorded elevated Winnability Scores across a number of districts, pointing to the party's expanding reach among a wider range of voter segments, though Roy Morgan indicated that several unresolved questions would still bear on the outcome before polling day on 28 November.

Negotiations over a potential minority government arrangement remain on the table, given that Labor had already distanced itself from any Greens partnership and the Coalition had done the same regarding One Nation ahead of polling day.

Roy Morgan flagged that polling figures may not fully capture One Nation's actual support, drawing on historical patterns such as the Democratic Labor Party's performance in the 1950s, the outcome of the 2016 US presidential race, and the stronger-than-anticipated vote recorded by Brazilian presidential candidate Flavio Bolsonaro the previous week, while the organisation's analysis stressed that the Victorian election result would turn on seat-level primary vote tallies, the preference deals struck between parties, and — above all — the direction preference flows actually took in each individual seat, given that those flows can shift substantially depending on which parties are eliminated first, with Roy Morgan concluding that, on the basis of polling and voter data gathered across the preceding six months, the contest would amount to a genuine toss-up if an election were held at that point.

During the Victorian campaign, One Nation's state leader Pickering disclosed past drug use and what he described as "low-level" drink driving in his twenties. Speaking at the party's campaign launch earlier this month, upper house hopeful Mark Nicholson called for former premiers Dan Andrews and Jacinta Allan to face imprisonment.

Among its stated policy positions, the party has pledged to wind back both the suburban rail loop project in Victoria and the treaty process established between the state and Indigenous Australians. The policy document, published at the time of the campaign launch, contained no financial costings.