Newcastle – Australia 2025

I’m not a local here but the neighbouring seats Labor appears to be serious trouble. Labor hold with a swing against them.

@Spacefish the other parts of Newcastle are different demographically to the seat of Newcastle itself. The seat of Newcastle itself is a mix of progressive, working-class and affluent/small-l-liberal suburbs. Hunter, Paterson and Shortland are white working-class seats (though Paterson and Shortland have some middle-class areas).

I could see this being a Greens target a few elections down the track particularly if the Greens could snag the state seat of Newcastle.

@Redistributed I doubt it. The Greens being woke and radical won’t resonate here just like it doesn’t resonate in Brisbane.

Newcastle isn’t like the capital city CBD seats. The Greens are way off from winning. They may enter the 2PP at best.

The western suburbs of Newcastle are less Green and have more ALP vs LIB contests. Some parts like Maryland and Minmi are very working class.

Newcastle has a massive proportion of welfare dependent and social housing voters on its western end and scattered through its northern suburbs (Mayfield). Naturally these voters don’t side with the Libs but they don’t like the Greens just as much.

Many white/blue collar voters also appear to be particularly unionized (nurses, teachers, university etc), which is why the Greens haven’t gained traction. The Greens also appear to select more ‘alternate looking’ candidates that don’t really speak to the working class or the small-I-Liberals.

Until the Greens can place second on FP AND the Libs preference them before Labor (it’s possible, if they play nice) they’re not going to come close.

@electioneer this is a working class seat noone but Labor will ever win here

@John: Don’t confuse welfare dependent and social housing with working class when looking at voting trends.

Where I was going, was, look at the Teal Party as an example, they came second on the FP to the Libs in Wentworth, Mackellar, North Sydney, Goldstein and Curtin but were pushed across the line on the 2PP by Greens and Labor preferences. There’s no reason the same can’t happen here for the Greens if the Libs decide to be strategic and deprive Labor of a majority by putting a Green in Newcastle. Problem is their candidates aren’t acceptable to mainstream Labor and Liberal voters (and constantly push far-left issues in local government which is a big turn-off) to get them into 2nd position on the FP across the seat.

Good evening from freezing Liverpool, UK.

I used to live in Newcastle. This is a mixed seat and there are areas where the Liberals do well but Newcastle has working-class and progressive areas that will vote Labor. However it’s not a seat I can ever see the Greens winning.

The only way the Liberals would win the FEDERAL seat of Newcastle would be in a big landslide. As for the state seat it would depend on the boundaries but still unlikely at the moment.

@electioneer the Libs learned their lesson in Melbourne in 2010 when they got Bandt in to do exactly that. They won’t be doing that again. Besides here there is a decent right wing vote outside of the Libs UAP and ONP that will back Labor over greens also the Labor vote is simply too high and the grn vote is too low atm for that to happen. Unlike teal seats the greens cant rely on an absolute flow of preferences.

@np libs will never win this seat the left accounts for about 2/3 of the vote here. This is literally Labor safest seat in the country

https://nswliberal.org.au/asarri-mcphee

Drove through Newcastle last night, no signs apart from a few Greens signs.

The Liberal HTV has preferenced Labor over Greens (who are last). The Greens campaign is to make the seat “marginal” by making it a contest vs Greens, but even if they do outstandingly well with those HTVs it’s still highly likely to be a safe ALP seat vs Greens.

Assume the goal is to come 2nd then run next time on it being a winnable Greens seat – but I haven’t seen it make THAT much of a difference in 2022 seats with that status like Canberra in terms of campaign funding, candidate quality or energy

The Age & SMH very briefly put Newcastle in the still-to-call category, and the AEC’s recent Labor-Green 2CP has been vacated.

Labor seems in no danger at all, but have FF and the ToP pushed the Liberals into second place or something?

https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal-election-2025-results
https://tallyroom.aec.gov.au/HouseDivisionPage-31496-136.htm

Actually Andrew I think you’ve got it backwards. The AEC had been conducting a Labor vs Liberal count and have now vacated that count. The website now shows a Labor vs Greens 2CP with no votes recorded, hence why some might have automatically made it too-early-to-call.

This seat was not one of the 35 non-classic seats in my analysis in today’s post but it looks like it will be one.

Ah, thanks @Ben ! My bad.

Seems like the Greens actually won 2 booths here (AFAIK they haven’t won any in Sydney/Grayndler/Cunningham, though they do have some 50+% primaries in Richmond).
Specifically, they won Tighes Hill (53.8%, of 444 people) and more importantly Islington (55.0%, of 1175 people).
Putting aside whether this means anything of substance for Labor/Greens, I wonder if Islington is just a very left-wing place name (/s, but the joke is that Corbyn’s seat in UK is Islington North)

@Leon I noticed that too and I thought gee Newcastle must be the next target for the Greens I’m sure given they actually won booths here compared to other inner-city seats like Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide or Perth. Because of this Labor has actually dropped in terms of a 2CP.

I’m not sure what Tighes Hill is like (a Novocastrian can probably speak better on this) but I’ve heard that Islington, unlike the UK equivalent which is a derelict and very low-income area around London, is actually quite progressive socially due to two things: Hunter Institute of Technology’s Newcastle Campus is based in this suburb so a lot of tertiary educated votes, and it’s also got Newcastle’s red light district (of sorts) with a lot of brothels and sex work being some sort of a big industry. Then of course you’ve got the industrial past which renders this area to be left wing anyway.

@Tommo9 Newcastle won’t ever be a Greens seat. Full stop. The Greens can’t even get close in any of the state seats. It’s probably more likely that the Liberals win it than the Greens if Labor’s vote somehow tanks.

Dutton wasn’t popular in the cities, Newcastle being no exception. Not only did he lose state Liberal booths but he couldn’t even pick up Paterson which was supposedly an “easy gain”.

Source: I did my uni in Newcastle

@Tommo9 as for sex work pretty much all the brothels and strip clubs in Newcastle are in or near one street (Hunter Street) according to Google Maps.

Islington used to have a lot of sex work. Doesn’t seem to be there anymore. It’s becoming a bit like Highbury and Islington in London: rich but left-leaning. Couldn’t live there though because of its connection to Arsenal.

@ NP
Islington and the Camden area of London are gentrified areas so like Northcote used to be working class so different to Kensington, Chelsea etc which old money rich and before Brexit solid for the Tories. I cant see Greens ever winning Newcastle or Cunningham unless Libs preference Greens. Labor will never be knocked out of the 2CP in Newcastle or Cunningham

@ Nimalan, true about the Greens’ minimal prospects there. An Andrew Wilkie-style progressing independent, on the other hand …

*progressive

@ Andrew of 3040
Yes an Andrew Wilkie style indepedent like those who ran in Bean and Freemantle could win with Liberal preferences

@Nimalan similar to Islington in Newcastle, it used to be working-class as well. Balmain in Sydney is another good example.