deep canvassing – R&R – Reachout and Rebuild

“Deep Canvassing” and the Lessons Political Campaigns Can Learn From It

David Posnett — Thu, 05 Dec 2019 04:55:29 +0000

Submitted to this blog by Arthur Schiff.

By Gabby Weiss, November 22, 2019

Deep Canvassing has grown in popularity as an organizing tool in the past few years, but while most people have heard of it, many are still unsure exactly what it is. The fundamentals behind deep canvassing are not new, in fact, organizing has always been based on the simple underlying belief that human conversations have the power to change minds and spur action.

The modern form of deep canvassing was developed by the Leadership LAB of the Los Angeles LGBT Center. Their Project Director, Dave Fleisher,

“In a conventional canvass, campaigns try to control the message by sending volunteers out with a script to recite exactly as written. There’s this belief that if we just say the right words, the voter’s going to change their mind. With a deep canvass, we want to figure out what’s relevant to voters. There’s still a script, but it’s designed to help the canvasser build a good rapport with a voter. The distinguishing feature of a deep canvass is you take a lot more time to talk to voters and have a bona fide two-way conversation about real experiences that shape their thinking about the issues. Instead of a script that lasts 60 seconds, volunteers spend 10 or 20 minutes talking with each voter.”
While deep canvassing has primarily been used on issue-based campaigns, such as ballot measures for LGBT issues like gay marriage and transgender equality, many of the techniques and principles can be adopted to deepen the organizing practice of electoral campaigns as well.

1. Build connections on the doors

Every good organizer knows that building connections is the secret to developing an energized volunteer base for a campaign, and it’s important to remember that this principle can apply to everyone that a campaign interacts with. Deep canvassing encourages canvassers to prioritize building a connection with each voter they engage with, going deeper than a simple candidate or issue ID. Creating real connections makes voters more likely to remember the conversations they have with canvassers or phone bankers and take action based on them.

2. Spend time listening

Part of building a connection with voters means practicing active listening. Fully concentrating on what a voter is saying, leaving space for a voter to pause and think before responding (without immediately jumping in to fill the silence), asking follow-up questions, and displaying engaged body language are all important listening techniques that create more meaningful conversations on the doors. If a voter spends more time talking during a conversation than a canvasser does, you’re doing it right!

3. Ask open-ended questions

No one likes being treated as a checkbox on a list, and when a voter takes the time to talk to a canvasser at their door it’s because they care about the political issues at hand. Moving beyond simple yes or no questions and prompting voters to share the things that they care about and the reasons behind their positions shows that your campaign is invested in their wellbeing, not just their vote. Asking follow-up questions assures voters that you are actually interested in what they have to say, and can give organizers insight into effective ways to motivate and activate them.

4. Find common values

The goal of a canvass is to prompt voters to take action, whether it be voting, volunteering, becoming a caucus leader, or talking to their other household members about voting. People take action because they care about something, so use canvass conversations to find out what is important to individual voters. Knowing the values that a voter holds, such as safety, community, justice, or fairness, can help you communicate your candidate’s positions in a way that is relevant and impactful to them.

5. Don’t be afraid of the hard questions

Having real conversations about politics means that sometimes tough issues will come up. Many communities in the country today are facing sharply divided political landscapes and evaluating hard questions about the future. Canvass conversations are effective when, rather than shying away from these issues, they are addressed head on, through the lens of shared values. What are the issues that a voter is considering when making a candidate decision, and which decision is ultimately more aligned with their values?

6. Let voters persuade themselves

Most people don’t like being told what to do or what to think, and so rather than telling someone what the right answer is, asking voters to consider these questions for themselves can be a powerful tool for persuasion. The goal of deep canvass conversations is not to directly tell people how to vote, but rather to help walk them through the reasoning process of determining which candidate’s positions align best with their values. Using this process can help a voter truly connect with their motivation for political involvement, something that ideally will stay with them through election day.

Deep Canvassing

David Posnett — Sun, 28 Apr 2019 14:30:50 +0000

What is “Deep Canvassing”?

Changing the Conversation Together (CTC) is an organization of concerned citizens working to combat the politics of hate and uphold checks and balances.

Using the evidence-based strategy of deep canvassing CTC played a critical role in helping Democrat Max Rose achieve an unlikely victory in New York’s 11th Congressional District.

Now, they will build on that success to mobilize a corps of deep canvassers in swing states to elect qualified and candidates in 2020.

Here is an example of Deep Canvassing puyblished in The Nation by Adam Barbanel-Fried who is a professional organizer with over 18 years of experience organizing throughout the United States and abroad.

The Conversations Democrats Need to Be Having

The danger of a continued Trump presidency is too dire to spend our limited resources on internal fights. April 12, 2019

This November, the day before the midterm election, I spoke with a retired police officer in Staten Island, New York, who’d voted for Trump. Let’s call him Tom. Tom didn’t regret voting for Trump. He was a Republican-leaning swing voter. Most progressives would have moved on. After a year of talking to swing voters in this swing district, however, I sensed tension within Tom.

“Are you satisfied with Trump when it comes to basic decency?… Does he meet the standard of decency you set for yourself?” I asked. Tom said no. We talked. We listened. We swapped stories. We bonded over shared concerns, specifically as fathers of daughters. As we bonded, he opened and allowed that Donald Trump is a nasty bully encouraging extremism. Eventually, Tom went from saying he didn’t regret voting for Trump, to joking that he voted for Trump in jest thinking Trump couldn’t win, to finally, uncomfortably, admitting that he couldn’t look his teenage daughter in the face and say he was proud of his choice. Originally leaning Republican, he found himself agreeing with the need for checks and balances and leaning Democratic.

The technique I was practicing in my 15-minute conversation with Tom is called “deep canvassing.” There is a growing body of work pointing to it as the way to engage swing voters and nonvoters, and move them in the progressive direction. While most door-to-door canvassing focuses on speedy interactions with your base to increase turnout, deep canvassing is a more relational form of voter engagement which leads to respectful conversation. It is also the most effective form of voter persuasion ever measured. In 2017, I and my colleagues launched Changing the Conversation Together, and spent 13 months “deep canvassing” swing voters helping Democrats win one of the biggest upsets in the midterms. We trained volunteers in storytelling, empathetic listening, and engaged conversation to help voters connect their personal experience to politics. We spoke to nearly 1,900 voters, helping the Democrat win Staten Island by 1,100 votes. Despite the trend to vote Democratic, our post-election study showed that the voters we canvassed were 14 percent more likely to vote and 20 percent more likely to vote Democratic than their non-canvassed neighbors.

In targeting voters traditionally neglected by Democratic campaigns, we exploded the myth that Trump voters are unmovable. While some fit that description, we also found Trump voters and nonvoters regretting their decisions. We met people with traditional leanings that hadn’t digested how the president emboldens hate groups and undermines a basic sense of decency. Many, upon reflection, were frightened by all the trends unleashed and agreed on the need to put these trends in check.

Since November, our young organization’s success has led to inquiries from around the country. Activists, organizations, and campaigns from Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and West Virginia have reached out for advice. Some traveled to New York to train with us. They, like us, want to do this work and want to do it now.

Meanwhile, the presidential election is 20 months away. Unfortunately, while scientific studies consistently show high-quality, in-person conversations outperforming every other form of voter engagement, the Democratic nominee will likely raise over $500 million and spend it mostly on TV ads in the few months before the election. Before the nominee is chosen, millions of dollars will be targeted at Democratic primary voters, but most of this activity will not engage the swing voters who frequently decide the general election. The eventual nominee will likely hastily assemble a team in the last three or four months of the campaign focused on mobilizing the Democratic base. While the midterms showed the Democratic nominee may have a good chance to win, incumbent presidents often bounce back from midterm losses to win reelection. In this high-stakes environment, there is important work to do.

Democrats, ask yourself this: With all that is at stake, are you going to wait until fall of 2020 to think about reaching swing voters who may decide the election? There are millions of volunteers who want to help—will they be offered the highest quality training to convert their energy into meaningful action?

While Democrats have an important decision to make about who can best lead them, the danger of a continued Trump presidency is too dire to spend our limited resources on internal fights. We need to start training volunteers and talking to prospective voters about what’s at stake now. We are getting to work. We hope we’re not the only ones.