Northcote – Victoria 2022

ALP 0.5%

Incumbent MP
Kat Theophanous, since 2018.

Geography
Inner north of Melbourne. Northcote mainly covers the southern suburbs of Darebin council, as well as the northeastern arm of Yarra council. It covers the suburbs of Alphington, Fairfield, Northcote, Thornbury and parts of Preston.

Redistribution
No change.

History
Northcote was first created for the 1927 state election, and in that time has been won by Labor at every general election, with the seat falling to the Greens for one year at a 2017 by-election.

Northcote was first won in 1927 by John Cain, who had previously been the Member for Jika Jika since 1917. Cain became leader of the Victorian ALP in 1937, and led the party through extended periods of hung parliaments. He served as Premier briefly in 1943 when the Labor-supported Country Party government fell, and served as Premier for two years from 1945 to 1947, before losing the 1947 election badly.

In 1952, John Cain won the state election, and governed as Premier until 1955, when Labor MPs from the Catholic “Movement” faction crossed the floor and brought down the government. These MPs formed the basis of the Democratic Labor Party. Cain remained as leader of the ALP until his death in 1957 while campaigning for the ALP in a Queensland state election.

The 1957 Northcote by-election was won by the ALP’s Frank Wilkes. He became the ALP’s deputy leader in 1967, and became leader in 1976. He served as leader until 1981, when he was replaced by John Cain Jr, who won government in 1982. Wilkes served as a minister in the Cain government until his retirement in 1988.

In 1988, Northcote was won by Tony Sheehan, who was Member for Ivanhoe from 1982 to 1985, when he lost the seat to the Liberal Party. He served as a minister in the final years of the Labor government, serving as Treasurer in 1992 before the Liberal Party won the state election that year. He retired in 1998.

The 1998 by-election was won by former ABC newsreader Mary Delahunty. She served as a minister in the Bracks government from 1999 to 2006, when she retired.

In 2006, Northcote was won by Fiona Richardson, and she was re-elected in 2010 and 2014. Richardson became Minister for Women and Minister for Prevention of Family Violence following the 2014 election.

Richardson died in August 2017. The subsequent by-election was won by Greens candidate Lidia Thorpe, thanks to an 11.6% swing.

Thorpe did improve on the Greens 2014 vote at the 2018 election but it wasn’t enough to retain her seat, losing to Labor candidate Kat Theophanous. Thorpe was subsequently appointed to a casual vacancy in the Senate.

Candidates

Assessment
Northcote is a very marginal seat, and I don’t expect the Greens to drop their efforts to win the seat back.

2018 result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing
Kat Theophanous Labor 17,748 41.7 +0.7
Lidia Thorpe Greens 16,816 39.5 +3.2
John Macisaac Liberal 4,570 10.7 -5.7
Franca Smarrelli Reason 1,448 3.4 +3.4
David Bramante Animal Justice 1,026 2.4 +0.7
Samuel Fink Liberal Democrats 500 1.2 +1.2
Bryony Edwards Independent 444 1.0 +0.2
Informal 1,911 4.3 +0.1

2018 two-candidate-preferred result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing
Kat Theophanous Labor 22,004 51.7 -4.3
Lidia Thorpe Greens 20,548 48.3 +4.3

2018 two-party-preferred result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing
Kat Theophanous Labor 35,417 83.2 +3.4
John Macisaac Liberal 7,135 16.8 -3.4

Booth breakdown

Booths have been divided into three areas: north, south-east and south-west.

Labor won a majority of the two-candidate-preferred vote in the north (54.5%) and the south-east (55.5%) while the Greens won 51.3% in the south-west.

The Liberal primary vote ranged from 7.6% in the south-west to 12.7% in the south-east.

Voter group LIB prim % ALP 2CP % Total votes % of votes
North 10.3 54.5 9,146 21.5
South-West 7.6 48.7 8,305 19.5
South-East 12.7 55.5 4,649 10.9
Pre-poll 11.2 51.2 14,743 34.6
Other votes 13.2 49.6 5,709 13.4

Election results in Northcote at the 2018 Victorian state election
Toggle between two-candidate-preferred votes (Labor vs Greens) and primary votes for the Labor, the Greens and the Liberal Party.

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130 COMMENTS

  2. Thanks Yoh An and Adda, not being Australian and not being fully familiar with your voting system I do not fully understand the finer points. ABC has added in some votes this morning beyond the VEC numbers and using Poll Bludgers preference flow of 67.4% to Greens I estimate the gap could now be as low as 140 preferences. So this result at distribution could be very tight indeed, which the VEC says will take place at 4.30 PM or after today.

  3. @ Greenman, one mistake i would say the Greens made here was not to choose a young culturally diverse woman. The Greens chose an Angloceltic man. If the Pascoe Vale Candidate ran here IMV she would have had a much better chance. This seat has a historically significant Greek community although over time this has shrank as the community has started to move to more suburban areas like Bulleen, Bentleigh etc. In Pascoe Vale there is an Italian community.

  5. So looks like Labor’s managed to retain this by a quite small amount. Noting the Liberal’s decision to recommend votes to the Greens over Labor on their htv cards, I thought it’d be useful to look at the 3CP result, which gives the following:
    Labor: 44.04%
    Greens: 40.18%
    Liberal: 15.78%

    There was a flow of about 61% to the Greens from the 3CP Liberal vote, which is almost exactly what Labor received from them last time. The Greens got 40% from the Liberal’s 3CP last time, and giving them that percentage this time it winds up having the Greens 2CP being 46.49%.

  6. I think 2018 preference flows would underestimate the impact of the change. Having a swing on first preferences normally means an increase in preference flows received from a particular party and vice versa. With a drop of 10% for the Greens and Labor dropping only 1%, the relative strength of Liberal preference shows should be stronger for Labor than 2018.

    Analysis of seats from other elections usually has it at 30% or more “swing” on preference flows thanks to changing Liberal HTV order so I think taking that assumption drops the expected Greens 2CP to about 46.1%

  9. Hey Greenman,

    What you dismiss as “partisan cackling” you may care to look more objectively as responding to a whole heap of just negative tripe on this thread from local and not-so-local Greens activists who are quick to throw insults but never able to back anything up with substance.

    I asked numerous times for anyone to spell out exactly what I may have been wrong about or why people disagreed and all I got was either silence or another lame ass dig at me personally.

    I know this area very, very well. I made a significant profit from some election seat betting because the betting agencies had this one so wrong that it was laughable – paying up to 5:1 odds for Labor to win. I will be donating all proceeds to Brain Injury Australia, having suffered an ABI due to a dangerous driver a decade or so ago.

    Even with my significant brain injury, I beat most people here on the projection for this seat and note that Greens primary vote has gone backward to 2006.

    You attribute this to the Victorian Socialist candidate, however the votes I saw counted in the prepoll counting room on election night (more than 50% of formal ballots) had around 16.6% of these preferencing Labor. Many of them I can tell you put Greens a fair way down the ballot, so I daresay there was a component of protest voting against the Labor government in the VS vote, however these people clearly did not want this to translate into their vote going toward the Greens.

    There are a few things never to be discounted in this electorate – foremost is the widespread hatred of the Darebin Greens Councillors, two of whom were nearly expelled by the party following their sabotage of their 2018 Federal candidate’s byelection in March of that year.

    Until the Darebin Greens gets the courage to do what it should have done then – that is, expel the 18 members who sabotaged that campaign and continue to cause division locally, then they will never stand a chance of making any gains here.

    Additionally, this is a very progressive electorate – the Greens have on a number of occasions declared it the most progressive community in Australia – yet the Greens make the mistake of assuming this will automatically translate into support for their candidates. Big mistake. It is a very politically aware electorate with lower levels of transient population movement as experienced just to the south and just to the west, where Greens fare better. What this tells me is that any community with a living memory of Greens’ behaviour knows better than to give them widespread support.

    Bookmakers always get this electorate wrong – on a state and federal level. I hate betting and will never bet on anything except elections in this local area. Brain Injury Australia has done very well out of it since the March 2018 byelection when I started getting involved in politics here once again, following my initial support to the Greens a long time ago – then a nasty injury that reset my life and had a long recovery, which made me realise how important is it to support good Labor governments that have historically put in place nearly every socially progressive initiative.

    Greens only ever serve to undermine this, which is why the conservatives have started preferencing them again like they last did in 2006… back where the local Greens primary vote has revisited, funnily enough.

  10. And to those discussing up above, at a community forum, Campbell Gome identified that he is of part Scottish-Australian and part Polish Askenazi heritage, his grandmother having fled with her family like so many others during WW2.

    In any case, save for the 50 or so people in that room, he did come across as a 50 something year old white Aussie guy up against a 30 something year old Mediterranean woman. There may be a slowly shrinking Greek population here but it is more or less the same in number as it was over the past 15 years, as their children (such as Kat) would identify as Australian born in statistics, however they still very much identify as part of the Greek diaspora. Saturday morning language school throughout their childhood made sure of that!
    Put it this way, they are more Greek than Gome is Jewish.

  11. Hi Matthew,

    It’s ok to have political opinions and I respect your dedication and thoughts. I live in the Northcote electorate and want to add a few points just for clarification.

    I would personally say the 9-10% swing against Campbell was due to A, Socialists Candidate running and B, the fact that in 2018 Greens had an incumbent through Lidia Thorpe.

    Secondly, Darebin Council isn’t a Greens Majority council like Yarra with 3 Greens CR, 3 Labor CR and 3 Independent CR. With this in mind, I do not believe the swing against the Greens was due to council actions, and this can further be seen in the Richmond results where Gabrielle, the Mayor of the “dysfunctional” Yarra Greens council according to Labor and Liberal candidates and Labor’s watchdog, got a swing in her favour.

    But again, it’s all fair to have political views and whatnot, im not a huge fan of the Greens, idm them. But personally I believe your points about why they lost are a bit misleading, considering
    A. Darebin isn’t Greens majority like Yarra, B. Lidia was the incumbent in 2018
    C. Richmond had a primary swing to the Greens in a dysfunctional Greens council

    Anyways! Hope you’re celebrating the win, Merry Christmas Y’all!

  12. What are the chances the Liberals preference the Greens in 2026? It seems unlikely, which would make this seat much safer for Labor. The Greens would probably struggle to make any gains in 2026 without Liberal preferences, especially since they could only make 1 in 2022 with Liberal preferences.

  13. @ Adam
    I think it is less likely now tbh. In the Mulgrave by-election, the libs preferenced ALP ahead of the Greens. Last time, preferencing the Greens ahead of Labor was part of the “put Labor last strategy” which was also aimed at areas with anti-lockdown sentiment where voters may have been upset with Labor but had no intention of voting Liberal. The Israel issue has inflamed many much of the Liberal base and it seems that it is the only thing that unites Libs at the moment. Alexander Downer is even calling the Labor party to preference Libs ahead of Greens see article below. According to Antony Green’s analysis if Libs preferenced Labor ahead of the Greens in Northcote then Labor would have got a swing to them and won the seat by 4% TPP against the Greens

    https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/one-nation-pales-in-comparison-with-vicious-and-evil-greens-20240205-p5f2di-article by Alexander Downer

  17. @preston I think pascoe Vale and Preston will be targeted too. And maybe footscray as a long shot. The liberals should be able to at least get Labor into minority

  18. i am not so sure. Kat Theophneous is quite popular so provided she receives Liberal preferences she should hand on. Pascoe Vale has a decent Liberal vote so will not be easy for the Greens to pick up.

  21. @ John
    Last time the Greens actually lost votes to the Victorian Socialists that helps Labor with preference leakage. Also i dont think Libs will preference Greens again so Labor has a very good chance of not having to worry about the inner city. The Greens now have competition from Reason, AJP & Victorian Socialists.

  22. A@nimalan the way preferences work anyone who voted VS then Labor would have voted Labor if the VS weren’t on the ballot

  23. I don’t think this will go Green. The margin is ‘notionally’ over 4% (given Liberal preferences likely to be reversed). I feel the Greens have reached their high point, they’re not growing exponentially around here. Kat Theophanous is popular. The change in preferencing will also help Labor elsewhere. The swing away from Labor in Preston was also due to the market issue, don’t know if that will be an issue in 2026.

  24. I don’t know if Reason will run again. They seem to sit in between Labor and the Greens, and Paten supported Labor a lot in parliament, while also effectively lobbying for her causes.
    Their preferences seem to split fairly evenly between Labor and the Greens.

  27. Reason just deregistered voluntarily last week.
    A little disappointed about that, Patten was able to work constructively and sensibly whilst pushing Labor to go further with reforms they could have very easily delayed.

    @Daniel T Victoria still uses the old group voting tickets for the Legislative Council, Reason only polled 3.6% in Northern Metro and due to insufficient preference flows she was beaten by Adem Somyurek from the DLP formerly Labor.

  28. This is the Greens best pickup opportunity at the next election. Preston, Pascoe Vale, Footscray are the next most likely, albeit heavily reliant on Liberal preferences. Albert Park still seems a bit of a stretch, Hawthorn has potential, even Ivanhoe is a longer term target.

  29. @ Daniel T
    Reason would have lost because they was anti-lockdown backlash is poorer parts of the Northern Metro Region this drove up the cooker vote which preferenced DLP. The Labor primary crashed so surplus Labor votes did not go as preferences to Reason or Vic Socialists.
    @Adam, agree about Preston, the market issue as well as anti-lockdown backlash in poorer parts of the seat around Reservoir/Keon Park which is demographically more like Thomastown.

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