The only place you'll see Jeremy Corbyn in the Oldham West and Royton by-election is on UKIP's leaflets. He's on almost every publication put out in the constituency by Nigel Farage's party, who view him as an electoral asset ahead of Thursday's vote, variously describing him as a "security risk" and "a threat to our nation". The flyers also reprint anti-Corbyn front pages from The Sun and the Daily Mail.
All of this is making Nigel Farage very happy.
"I would say 40-50% of traditional Labour voters are concerned about his leadership of the Labour party on the grounds of national security," explained the UKIP leader, smoking a cigarette in Royton's part-demolished 1960s shopping centre. "That's why turnout for Labour is going to be such a problem for Labour on Thursday. They might not switch to us but they might just stay at home."
There's no getting away from it: Corbyn has a polarising effect on Oldham voters and it's not great news for Labour. When BuzzFeed News spent a day in the constituency we only found a minority of voters who said they actively liked the Labour leader or felt enthused by his politics.
More voters – both UKIP and Labour – raised issues pushed by tabloids in recent months, such as Corbyn allegedly disrespecting the Queen. Perhaps more damningly, around a third of people in Oldham simply hadn't heard of him; if they had, many suggested Corbyn was just an expenses-seeking Westminster politician – another MP on the make.
Marilyn Muir, a former office worker who spoke to BuzzFeed News on a street corner outside a bakery, is typical of many voters in the constituency: She strongly dislikes David Cameron and his austerity measures and used to vote Labour, but believes the party allowed levels of immigration to get too high. This time around she's backing UKIP and views Corbyn with deep suspicion: "He's another ditherer – he won't sing the national anthem, he's not behind the Queen."
What about the idea he's bringing a new politics?
"The only type of politics he needs to bring is to look after the British people instead of looking after everybody else first. We need to come first – I know it sounds selfish and there are genuine refugees coming in.
"I'd rather have Putin," she concluded. "Mess with him and you mess with the wrong one."
Views like this are common in Oldham. It's not so much anti-Corbyn sentiment as a general disgust with the political system. One of the most common complaints was that politicians aren't doing enough to support injured military veterans returning home from war – Corbyn's pacifism just makes it easier for them to pin their complaints on the Labour leader.
"He's got a lot to prove," said security official David Guinn, while admiring a Christmas display of animatronic bears in a local shopping centre. "I was UKIP at the last election and it's not that I'm a racist but I just don't disagree with a lot of immigration – we have ex-servicemen on the street, we need to look after our own."
UKIP is banking on a negative reaction to the Labour leader helping the party finally make an electoral breakthrough in the north of England. On an overcast day in a Greater Manchester town that's already known for being overcast, Farage was praying to the rain gods for a heavy downpour come Thursday's by-election. His hope is that it will keep wavering Labour voters at home in a seat which was held for the party by MP Michael Meacher, now deceased, with a majority of over 14,000 votes in May's general election.
UKIP and their tweed-heavy team of campaigners don't think they're going to win the election (at one point the party's candidate, John Bickley, admitted his plan for next week is to "have a lie down", suggesting he isn't intending to head to Westminster) but they think they will push Labour close – within a few thousand votes, maybe a few hundred – and cause a headache for Corbyn.
These issues are further highlighted by the respective party leaders' visibility in the area. Farage is now effectively living in the constituency; Corbyn has made only one brief visit.
"I'm nominally a Labour voter but he's generally too left-wing," said a hospital worker called Keith, who said he wanted to stick with the party but had concerns about immigration and Corbyn's approach to the threat of terrorism. "I've got reservations about the general temper of his thing – he's in opposition so it's dead easy to have certain chances to say things. I disagree on shoot-to-kill; you can't negotiate with people like ISIS."
Racial tensions are never far from the surface in the constituency, where a quarter of voters are British Asians and both sides are targeting their campaign using ethnicity.
"This would be the breakthrough [election] if it weren't for the 25% Muslims," bemoans one UKIP campaigner.
One man, asked how he would vote, calmly said he would back any politician "who can sort out the situation with the Asians", before insisting that UKIP was too extreme for him.
Jim McMahon, the Labour candidate and leader of the local council, has no time for the implication that Asian voters are blocking democracy: "If UKIP think having an Asian population that have the right to vote is somehow a problem then surely what they should be doing is trying to reach out to the whole of Oldham. They are a nasty, negative party who think nothing of personal attacks."
"UKIP will get the disenfranchised vote and they're playing on that. They'll use any card whether it's about race, division, or Jeremy."
It's certainly true that few of Oldham's Muslims have much time for UKIP. Honufa Begum, working in the town's covered market, said she'll be voting Labour alongside her whole family and said she's "heard of" Corbyn and supports the party's anti-bombing stance in Syria: "They've already been bombed enough times, they don't need to be bombed any more. There's nothing left now."
Mohammed Ali ("yeah, like the boxer") said all British politicians are "absolute scum" but "James Corburn or whatever he's called is the only person standing up against war".
"Top man," said Ali, making a peace sign. "I'd probably get arrested if I went around the streets and said we want peace. The Sun, the Daily Mirror, they chat shit. Why are the government allowing them to print this rubbish?"
He then added: "Of course, ISIS stands for Israeli Secret Intelligence Service."
UKIP is not shy of playing up racial tensions and its rhetoric on keeping out new immigrants melds into criticism of the people whose families have been in the UK for years. Farage was particularly excited by one tweet by a Guardian journalist which referenced large numbers of people who don't speak English voting Labour. UKIP has also heavily pushed a picture of an apparently gender-segregated local meeting in support of McMahon's campaign.
"Muslim ladies, Asian ladies in one group, and a white Caucasian lady in another group," added UKIP candidate Bickley.
"Quite telling, isn't it," said Farage.
"They [Labour] are very strong in the Muslim community," agreed Bickley.
Interestingly some of the Labour leader's most vocal defenders in Oldham are supporters of other parties who admire him as a man of principle, even if they disagree with his policies. And there's near-universal agreement, even from opponents, that the media have treated him badly – often from people who then repeat the same anti-Corbyn attack lines.
"What Corbyn has done is change politics a little bit," said Nicholas Milai, a Tory-supporting pharmacist who admires the Labour leader's decision to offer his MPs a free vote on Syria. "What we need to promote in parliament is serious democracy: Vote for what you stand for, vote freely, then we actually get a true vote."
With hours to go until polls opened McMahon – who refuses to confirm suggestions he voted for Blairite Liz Kendall in this summer's leadership election – expressed disappointment with UKIP's campaign tactics in targeting his party leader and criticising minority voters. "What I find so dispiriting about this by-election," he said, "is finding all these outsiders from UKIP rocking up in town and trying to divide-and-rule and using and abusing us. I want this over and them to bugger off back to Cheshire."
But if he becomes Oldham West and Royton's MP on Thursday he's sure of one thing: He wants a leadership who can provide "strong opposition". He'll just have to see whether Corbyn can provide it.