Thread by @bounder

I stood for Labour in Oxfordshire in the local elections, in a remain-voting constituency, with incumbent Tories. Labour had one the seat in the past (2011, slightly different ward boundaries).

Here's what I learned…

First more context: ward is approx 50% '(white) working class' and quite poor, and 50% more middle class. Little diversity, to tell the truth (certainly feels like that to me as an exiled Brummie). 2 Tories, 2 Lib Dems and me as candidates (no, UKIP, Green or others).

We knew a Labour win was unlikely, but we're playing a longer game and put what resources we could muster into the campaign. So we spoke to hundreds of people on the doorstep, mostly either (sometime) Labour voters or likely candidates.

Brexit came up a little in conversations. Almost always from a 'leave' perspective.

Mostly people not voting at all as they feel their referendum vote hadn't been respected.

Others either not voting, or not voting Labour, because of general disillusion with politics.

I spoke to one person, an EU citizen, who was voting LD in response to Labour not stopping Brexit.

Jeremy Corbyn and his leadership came up a handful of times:

75% of those in positive terms. One voter told me "Labour has my vote as long as it has a man like him"

At the count there were a lot of spoilt papers (more than 50 at least), almost all that had anything you could identify on them were pro-Brexit.

* The Lib Dem vote held almost exactly as it had in 2015.
* The Tory vote halved.
* The Labour vote stayed approx the same in %age terms, but dropped by 1/3 in votes.

Turnout was down by approx 2,000.

Which leads me to believe:

Mainly it was the Tory vote staying away (presumably Brexit) rather than a Lib Dem surge.

Labour votes may have gone a little to the LDs, but I suspect most lost simply didn't vote.

One (two member ward) of the Tory incumbents was unpopular locally too, and the District Council (was Tory, flipped to LD on Thurs) was also quite unpopular and having money troubles (as all councils are under the Tories nationally).

The LD's campaigned very hard, the Tories did one leaflet promising to "keep two hours free parking" in the town, and suggesting voters shouldn't think about Brexit.

Labour worked hard, but don't have the resources locally that the other two parties do.

The Tories seemed apathetic, the LDs energised.

Local LDs also did an alliance with the Greens to step aside after Greens did likewise in 2017 GE. But while their percentage vote rose, the numbers hardly moved.

I don't think this necessarily has any things that can be extrapolated to other places or to national politics. But I say again: it's the leave voters who seem more angry, they're angry with politics in general, and they mainly showed that by staying away.

If they'll still stay away in the EU elections, given there will be those explicitly anti-EU parties, I don't know.

I suspect some Tory voters will defect to those parties too if the options is there.

Labour core seems solid, but might be affected by apathy in EU elections.

I think that this is probably a high-water mark for the LDs locally though.

That's just one ward story, there are 8,999 others just from Thursday, plus the huge numbers of mainly city areas that didn't vote at all.

Use the pure seat data to support any point at all at your absolute peril. But commentators wouldn't do anything like that, would they?