The Queensland state election crashes up against the standard narrative that populist parties are storming the ramparts in an angry assault on incumbent governments.

In this case, the incumbent looks as if she's been returned to power. The count so far suggests that her parliamentary position will actually be strengthened.

Annastacia Palaszczuk led a minority government into the election and it seems she'll be leading a majority out of it.

There was a swing against her Labor Party of 1.5 per cent, a standard anti-incumbent swing at any time in the past half-century or more.

It's not that Pauline Hanson's One Nation is finished. The party fell well below expectations, but that's largely because the expectations it created were way overblown.

One Nation has polled 13.7 per cent statewide in the count so far. Judged against its high-water performance of 23 per cent in 1998, this does look disappointing for Hanson.

But as the independent poll analyst John Stirton points out: "When you don't contest all the seats and you still get 14 per cent of the vote, it's a pretty strong vote for a minor party - it's more than the National Party has ever won, or the Greens, or the Democrats."

The party failed to win many seats because its vote wasn't sufficiently concentrated geographically.

Winning one vote in seven makes One Nation a force. And while it's a force that didn't strike the government, it still struck. The whirlwind swept past Labor and hit the conservative Liberal National Party opposition instead.

While the swing against Labor was 1.5 per cent, the swing against the LNP was five times as big, a whopping 7.8 per cent on the count so far. In other words, Hanson's populist movement is revealed to be not so much anti-incumbent as anti the conservative establishment party.

This makes One Nation a special problem for the Coalition. The question is, how does the federal Liberal-National Coalition respond to this fact?

The Turnbull government holds five marginal seats in Queensland and cannot afford to lose any. 

The federal Nationals MP George Christensen immediately had this suggestion. The Coalition should "stand up more for conservative values", he said.

"I think a lot of that starts with the Turnbull government, its leadership and its policy direction."

This is tantamount to a call for Turnbull to be deposed and replaced with a member of the Liberals' conservative faction. It's effectively a demand to install prime minister Peter Dutton.

That could well improve the Coalition's appeal to conservatives. But there are two problems with the Christensen solution.

First, the same sex marriage vote is a reminder that conservatives alone don't constitute a majority.

Second, One Nation voters aren't conservatives. They're a right-wing protest vote.

Or, as Stirton puts it, it's self-serving for the destabilising Coalition mavericks like Christensen to divide the government, harm its standing, then turn around and say, "The solution is us."

The solution, says Stirton, "is presumably to provide a better quality centre-right leadership".

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten will be laughing at this Coalition dilemma all the way to election day. Or to the next Liberal leadership coup. Whichever comes first.