A few obvious thoughts about Hartlepool:

- Labour collapsed
- It's not a Tory landslide
- Labour did better in 2019 than they did in 2015

1/

- Turnout was massively down (15% or around 11000 voters)
- Securing/retaining just over half of the new abstainers would have been enough for Labour to win
- 29000 people didn't vote - almost twice the Tory vote and three times the BP vote in 2019

2/

Needless to say that bringing people out of abstention is not an easy thing to do, and I wouldn't blame them for not trusting a system clearly against them, BUT...

... is it harder than winning Tory (or far right voters)?

It would also helps securing your base obviously

3/

I keep banging on about this, but we need to talk more about abstention, and less about it in negative terms

If we are to pretend we live in a democracy, those voices matter and their electoral silence is telling

They are often the real left behind, not the racist voters

4/

I am not imbuing those who abstain with any particular political bent, but we should not dismiss them either, as is far too often the case

5/

I deleted the previous thread due to an egregious typo, thanks for noticing @meadwaj!