Academics, commentators and political analysts have continued to discuss Hanson's legacy and impact upon Australian politics since her rise to prominence in the 1990s and her political comeback in 2016. Milton Osborne noted that public opinion research indicated Hanson's initial support in the 1990s was not necessarily motivated by racist or anti-immigration sentiments, but instead from voters concerned about globalization and unemployment. In 2019, Hans-Georg Betz identified Hanson as among the first populist politicians to mobilize a public following by targeting "the intellectual elite" in their messages, and that in the twenty first century where "today’s army of self-styled commentators and pundits summarily dismissing radical right-wing populist voters as uncouth, uneducated plebeians intellectually incapable of understanding the blessings of progressive identity politics, Hanson’s anti-elite rhetoric anno 1996 proved remarkably prescient, if rather tame."