You won’t hear much about the Corbyn surge in the mainstream media. One reason for this, of course, is that “surge” is pushing it. A steady uptick in dismal poll ratings is not an earthquake. Rallies of the faithful prove no more now than when Michael Foot held them.

But that said, the Labour vote has not, so far, fallen off the popularly predicted cliff. It’s hovering somewhere around where Ed Miliband and Gordon Brown finished up, and while “only failing as badly as the last failure” is no great achievement, it still begs an explanation from those who insisted that Jeremy Corbyn would burn the house down overnight.

It’s possible, of course, that the polls are wrong again, or that they’ll collapse once the Tories unleash whatever grisly attack ads they have stashed away. But there are increasing hints that the bedrock vote – the irreducible core beneath which pollsters don’t expect mainstream parties to fall, traditionally estimated at about 30% – may be so called for a reason. Focus groups in some northern heartlands suggest the rage and alienation among working-class voters is real, and some clearly are switching to the Conservatives; but among those whose families have voted Labour for generations, there is still the ghost of a taboo against voting Tory.

The untold part of the story, meanwhile, is that while a radical leftwing prospectus may repel some voters, it clearly is attracting others. People who for years couldn’t find a manifesto they could embrace with all their hearts, who found the Blair era sterile and dry as dust, are thrilled to finally see their ideas in print. These ideologically (as opposed to economically) “left behind” voters are few in number – there just aren’t enough of them to win an election – but may play a critical role in what comes next, and their story too deserves telling.

This week’s picture of a rather papal-looking Jeremy Corbyn on a balcony outside Hebden Bridge town hall, addressing the overspill crowd who couldn’t get into the room, brought back memories. For the past 15 years or so I’ve been back and forth to Hebden too many times to count, watching my nephews and niece grow up there; it was and is a special place, a gentle, green, tight-knit community full of friendly people open to alternative lifestyles and ideas. Always left-leaning, it’s now a positive hotbed of Corbynism, with Labour membership up from a few hundred in 2013 to over 2,000.

Jeremy Corbyn speaks to supporters in Hebden Bridge, May 2017. Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images

Something similar is true of Oxford East, where Corbyn also ventured last week – once the scruffy side of the city, now well-heeled in parts and favoured by academics – or of other membership hotspots from Brighton to York, Salford and Leeds. (Corbyn’s diligence in visiting these places rather than more obviously marginal seats has fuelled suspicion that he’s already fighting the next leadership contest under cover of the election.) Ask in places such as these about who is switching to Corbyn’s Labour, rather than away. Two clear groups emerge.

One is young and influenced by Facebook, getting much of its news via memes. These people display an emotional hunger for something different, a new politics not timidly hedged around with compromises or cowed by fear of the establishment. The number of Cleggmaniacs who melted away before polling day in 2010 is, however, one reason pollsters regard these new supporters as flaky and prone not to vote.

But the other group of Labour recruits is a more serious proposition. They’re older and strongly committed to voting, if not to one party (they warmed to Tony Blair initially, but were appalled by Iraq and may well have voted Lib Dem or Green). They might have called themselves Marxists in the 1970s but these days they own property, have generous pensions and some earn enough to pay Labour’s new top rate tax – which they see simply as the price of living in a civilised society. They’re drawn by the ideas, not by Corbyn personally, and his failure to prevent Brexit worried them, but concerns about austerity keep them loyal. Neither poor nor marginalised themselves, they’re nonetheless often in contact with people who are, thanks to their jobs in the NHS, teaching or social work.

If all this sounds familiar, then yes, they tend to read the Guardian, and as you may have guessed, they’re tired of things they have always believed in – a proper living wage, generous public services and an end to benefit cuts and austerity – being ridiculed as pie in the sky. Why should these things be deemed economically implausible when politicians fall over themselves to pretend it’s possible to leave the EU without paying any price?

They know they’re supposed to try to understand the frustrations of leave voters, not dismiss or caricature them. But they note that nobody seems interested in their frustration, that it remains entirely socially acceptable to caricature them as naive, militant or incapable of checking their white middle-class privilege long enough to see how few voters agree with them. They hate being portrayed as dragging the party down when to them it’s being lifted up – albeit on to the moral, not electoral, high ground. However many seats are swept away on 8 June, some will cling to any result that exceeds expectations, even if it’s just a bigger swing to Labour (but still no win) in seats such as Hebden Bridge. See, it’s starting to work; just give it time.

However many seats are swept away on 8 June, some will cling to any result that exceeds expectations

But the places where these voters cluster are undeniably exceptions, not the rule. Oxford East is a tiny red bubble in a vast sea of blue: you can drive as far as Bristol in the west or Southampton in the south before hitting another Labour seat. Hebden has a grittier side to the middle-class one outsiders see, but not for nothing is it nicknamed “the Didsbury of the valleys” (Google it, southerners). It’s a small town but with liberal big-city values – and that’s unusual even in Calder Valley, the constituency it sits within, let alone the wider north-west.

Corbyn would have got a very different reaction further up the valley in more socially conservative Brighouse, and unhappily for Labour’s prospects in a seat it held until 2010, that’s where the decisive bulk of voters in this constituency live. The Tories are so confident of taking neighbouring Halifax, meanwhile, that Theresa May came to launch her manifesto there. Corbyn didn’t visit even when he was passing.

To be clear, there is no path to power under first-past-the-post that doesn’t lead through the voters of places such as Halifax and Brighouse, Coventry and Walsall, Swindon and Nuneaton. Psephologically speaking, the Hebdens just aren’t big enough to swing an election, which means for Labour to be reduced to a party of the big cities and occasional like-minded enclaves is a recipe for oblivion.

But to reach those voters, any alternative Labour leader would first have to get through party members, and that means responding to the overwhelming desire for politics that engages their emotions as Corbyn has.

People like me bewail Labour frontbenchers’ inability to do maths on the radio, but a significant chunk of those listening frankly couldn’t care less. If your heart swells on hearing Labour articulate your feelings for once, then carping on about rigour in policymaking – much as that still matters, if a party is to have any hope of delivering on promises – sounds like nitpicking.

This election, and the next likely leadership contest, are these Corbyn supporters’ chance to shoot for the stars: one last opportunity for voters scorned, people outnumbered in any conventional election, to be heard. Who imagines they will give all that up, for a handful of dust?