A defiant Pauline Hanson has declared her party's performance at the weekend's WA election was "fantastic", and claimed her party will pick up as many as five upper house seats.
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Senator Hanson blamed Labor for spooking voters about One Nation's now-infamous preference deal with Colin Barnett's Liberals, and said the "scare campaign" was "all I heard" at polling booths on Saturday.
"People were supportive and said they wanted to vote for us but said when they heard we were doing preference deals with [the Liberals], they could not vote for us," she told Sunrise on Monday morning. "That's what I heard."
Senator Hanson insisted the media was covering up the extent of the One Nation vote, saying her party had already picked up three seats, and "possibly another two".
The ABC's election calculator predicts One Nation will win just two seats in the upper house. The WA Electoral Commission has not yet announced the result of any seats, but has Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party reaching or nearing quota in the Agricultural, and Mining and Pastoral regions.
Senator Hanson also claimed the party had polled 9.1 per cent of the vote "across the board".
One Nation on Sunday night was polling 4.7 per cent across the board in the lower house, but 8.1 per cent in the seats the party ran candidates in.
The party's vote collapsed from earlier polls, with a Newspoll last month predicting the outlier party could pick up as much as 13 per cent of the vote. Weeks later, Newspoll forecast the party's vote had slumped to 8 per cent, in the wake of Senator Hanson's controversial statements questioning vaccinations and praising Russian president Vladimir Putin.
"We had a fantastic result," Senator Hanson told Channel 7 on Monday.
"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."
While she admitted the preference deal with the Liberal Party had hurt the party's performance, she blamed Labor for a scare campaign over the issue, and said Labor had sent preferences the Liberals' way, too.
"They did not tell people that their preferences were going to the Liberal Party as well. They put us last. Their preferences went there before One Nation."
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is facing internal and external pressure to rule out a preference deal with One Nation federally, but on Sunday refused to rule out future deals.
"The next federal election is more than two years away and all preference decisions will be considered by the party organisation closer to an election," Mr Turnbull said.
Victorian Liberal MP Tim Wilson said the result showed the Liberal Party must avoid becoming "One Nation lite" and should not enter into preference deals with the party.
"When we do a preference deal with One Nation we legitimise them and get distracted as the folly of many of their policies are exposed," he said.
Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce said One Nation had a "shocker" at the election and it was a mistake for the WA Liberals to preference One Nation over the Nationals.
"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," he said.
"So 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."
- with Matthew Knott and Fergus Hunter.
