The seat of Newcastle-under-Lyme is one of the most stable constituencies in Staffordshire, having emerged unscathed from the 1995 boundary changes which had so much impact on the rest of the county’s seats. This stability has been reflected by the choices of the electorate, who have returned a Labour member at every election since the war.
There is no overwhelming reason why the constituency should have favoured Labour so strongly; its traditionally Labour strongholds such as former coal-mining communities in Chesterton and Silverdale are offset by more middle-class residential areas like Thistleberry and Westlands. A wide range of industry, from electronics to textiles, means that there is no reliance on a single large employer. Nonetheless, traditional Potteries Labour support has often seemed strongly embedded here, with the majority not falling below 2,500 even at Labour's nadir in the 1983 general election.
The closest the seat has come to changing hands in recent history was the by-election in 1986 after long-serving MP John Golding resigned. His wife Llin, herself the daughter of an MP, won the Labour nomination but came within 800 votes of losing the seat to the Liberal Alliance.