Whatever you think of her, she is a phenomenon to be explained.

It is an unlikely story that an unknown candidate in a Labor seat, disendorsed by the Liberals during John Howard's 1996 campaign, should still be flourishing. Until last year that story was littered with personal and party failures which would have consigned any other outfit to total oblivion. She ran for parliament numerous times, even falling just short of a remarkable election to the NSW Legislative Council in 2011. She has been in and out of the party she created, and even led another party, Pauline Hanson's United Australia Party for some years. Every other One Nation MP at the state and federal level has crashed and burned and collectively they are unremembered.

Yet she burst back into Federal Parliament last July leading a team of four One Nation senators spread across three states. A most unlikely and largely unheralded result.

Since then she has scared the pants off state and federal politicians in Western Australia and Queensland, her two strongholds, and has become the most reported issue in the current Western Australian state elections. Her preference exchange with Colin Barnett's state Liberals may define the result and all predictions are that One Nation will add the balance of power in the Western Australian upper house to their Senate position.

She is playing a larger role in the state election campaign than any other federal politician, leaving Barnett, State Premier for more than eight years, to bewail the fact that the media are talking about nothing else. Yet he himself stoked the fire by his preference deal and his federal colleagues saw no problems.

There are two levels of explanation which go towards explaining Hanson.

One is a general sociological explanation which stresses world-wide factors such as the rise of populist right-wing parties and movements, especially in Europe, before pointing to recent events such as Brexit in the United Kingdom and the election of Donald Trump as President of the USA. These factors are said to include general disaffection with business-as-usual mainstream political parties, economic failure especially in rural and regional areas, social disruption attributed to immigration and refugees, international terrorism and anti-Islamic sentiment.

Hanson ostentatiously welcomed the election of Trump and is keen to locate her party among these general trends. But, even if this general explanation is persuasive, that leaves the question of why Hanson has succeeded and others apparently like her have failed.

Hanson has seen off several other minor parties and other candidates for the role including Graeme Campbell's Australia First party back in the 1990s and currently Bob Katter's Australian Party. Both Campbell and Katter brought vastly more experience to the task but failed to create on-going parties that captured the popular imagination.

She has ridden right over the right-wing religious parties like Fred Nile's Christian Democrats and Family First, hammered the remnants of Clive Palmer's Palmer United Party in Queensland and threatens to prevent Cory Bernardi's Australian Conservatives getting any traction. She has swamped her opposition among dozens of contenders to represent the protest vote that larger social forces have generated.

That leads to examination of Hanson herself. She has been the subject of mockery over the years, which may have helped her with the public. She is not especially flamboyant second time around. She is decidedly without frills compared to Glenn Lazarus' Rugby League pedigree, Katter's cowboy hat and Bernardi's "Make Australia Great Again" cap. Nor is she articulate.

But she does have some positives. The "fish and chip shop" tag, used against her again recently by Australia Post's Ahmed Fahour, works in her favour. She has a politically bankable story as an ordinary battler. And as a woman, like many equivalent far-right leaders in Europe including France's Marine Le Pen, she stands out from the crowd of dark blue-suited men.

Tasmania's Jacqui Lambie had a start on her in the Senate but while Lambie has also been able to build a national profile and a comfortable niche in Tasmania, only Hanson has been able to leverage that reputation into a nation-wide political party.

Her reputation is not just as a politician but as a media celebrity who is a veteran of shows like Celebrity Apprentice, Who Wants to be a Millionaire, This is Your Life and Dancing with the Stars. Andrew Denton interviewed her on Enough Rope and there have been numerous books and documentaries.

The media relationship, one key element, involves both love and hate, building her up but frequently threatening to tear her down. She survives it all despite many provocative and reckless statements, including her recent attack on compulsory vaccination. In fact she does more than survive the media; it is her life-blood.

No one really understands her personal appeal. These things are an art, not a science. There are political science tools for trying to understand her party platform and the characteristics of those who vote for her. But other than confirming the party's lack of organisation or conspicuous wealth and its appeal across the political spectrum to those who reject the major political parties as elitist there is much more to understand. Further investigation should centre on the mysterious appeal of Hanson herself.

John Warhurst is an Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the Australian National University.