Newcastle – Australia 2028

This seat surprised me, in that the Greens managed to finish 2nd here and made the 2CP, even despite numerous right wing minor parties contesting.

This is not that surprising to have Greens as 2CP finish. Charlotte McCabbe is a very active and well known politician in Newcastle. She is an incumbent Councillor and also is currently the Acting Lord Mayor of Newcastle City Council until early 2026 when the Lord Mayor Kerridge returns from medical leave.

Charlotte is pragmatic and some people see her as more progressive and representative of what the city needs rather than Sharon Claydon. The Coal Industry is set to start to faulter in the coming decade or so, which I think will push a lot of people angry at Labor and Liberals (as they have not had much of a plan to transition workers in this industry when compared to the Greens).

Newcastle also has a local newspaper (Newcastle Herald) which is not owned by Newscorp, which may have potentially limited influence of right wing parties in Newcastle city.

I wonder if the University population here has had an impact on the seat going further left. UON is in the seat.

You have to think of Newcastle as a university and medical town, which explains the green vote.

Wasn’t Newcastle left wing long before it’s university opened?

It was, my point is it’s somewhat gentrified now.

It was predominantly working class, now it’s a more highly educated seat.

Given Newcastle was Labor’s safest seat prior to the last election it was pretty clear that it was going to bring the Greens into the 2CP sooner or later given other less safe major city seats like Canberra, Perth etc were already ALP vs Green contests and Cunningham was very close to being that this time round judging by the primary votes in that electorate where the Greens almost overtook the Liberals.

There’s no surprises to see why either. It had one of the highest votes for SSM in the regions, one of the only regional electorates (along with Cunningham) to vote Yes to the voice, UoN as mentioned previously, gentrification plus movement of seachangers from Sydney, not to mention a huge activist base (the ones who keep blocking coal ships coming in and out of Newcastle).

That being said, Sharon Claydon is also a pretty good fit for the electorate as she’s very left wing by Labor standards and has a pretty decent personal vote. It won’t be in play until she retires and even then it will take a few cycles given that there’s still a decent suburban/Boomer vote out there in the west (near Wallsend) that favours the Libs over the Greens.

Though I think it also needs to be said that according to the booth results, Wallsend actually had the Greens come second on primaries with Labor way ahead and the Liberals collapsing. That probably tells you all you need to know about the suburban vote that Dutton so desperately wanted to chase. Not only did he fail to win them, but the Greens beat them to it.

If the Liberals can’t win the suburbs then they’ve got no hope in hell of winning elections based on regional/rural areas alone.

Tommo9 is correct it was always left-wing but has gentrified and not become a Rust Belt. Cunningham is having a simmilar trejectory. Interestingly not only did Cunningham/Newcastle vote YES they actually had a slightly better result for the Voice than the Republic in 1999 adjusted to 2022 boundaries. I can see Cunningham becoming an ALP V GRN seat someday.
I think Geelong has the same trejectory and Corio/Corangamite almost voted YES to the Voice and better for the Voice than Republic in 1999. I think it is less likely that Corio will turn into an ALP V GRN seat as Geelong is a smaller city and there is a largely Liberal base in Corio but Corio will never be won by Libs again.

The Liberal vote like just about everywhere else bottom out hence the Greens made it to the tpp however I can see Greens increasing their primary vote in 2028 again but what remains to be seen is if the Liberals can recover enough to make it back in the ttp.

A couple things here as I did graduate from the University of Newcastle (yet still ended up being a Liberal voter):

1. Newcastle (particularly this part of Newcastle) was always a working-class city back in the day. Even today Newy has the largest coal port in the world. This is why it votes Labor.
2. This is an urban seat, Newcastle is not regional. It is a major city with over half a million residents.
3. Newy Uni is one of the most well-known unis in the country and yes, unis are pretty woke. That’s partly why the Greens vote exists, but remember not every uni student is a leftist protester.

A Liberal wouldn’t win here but if gentrification continues some parts (like Lake Macquarie) could start becoming more competitive like Port Stephens but only with moderate candidates. Eventually pollies will have to campaign here and win over voters to get power in NSW and federally: it’s a major city after all. Lake Macquarie should be interesting when Greg Piper retires.

@NP
If the Liberals are more moderate they maybe able to flip booths around Merewether wealthiest part of Newcastle but that is not enough to win the seat.

@Nimalan not enough to win the seat of Newcastle itself no.