Canvassing
Canvassing, also known as door knocking or phone banking, is the systematic initiation of direct contact with individuals, commonly used during political campaigns. Canvassing can be done for many reasons: political campaigning, grassroots fundraising, community awareness, membership drives, and more. Canvassing is used by political parties and issue groups to identify supporters, persuade the undecided, and add voters to the voters list through voter registration, and it is central to get out the vote operations. It is the core element of what political campaigns call the ground game or field.
Organized political canvassing became a central tool of contested election campaigns in Britain, and has remained a core practice performed by thousands of volunteers at each election there, and in many countries with similar political systems.
Canvassing can also refer to a neighborhood canvass performed by law enforcement in the course of an investigation. This is a systematic approach to interviewing residents, merchants, and others who are in the immediate vicinity of a crime and may have useful information.
In the United States, the compilation of election returns and validation of the outcome that forms the basis of the official results is also called canvassing.
Practice
A modern election canvass may be conducted by a candidate, volunteers, and/or paid canvassers. The canvassers are given lists known as canvass sheets or in the UK as reading pads. These are a list of households to be contacted, generated from a voter database. Some campaigns today have replaced paper sheets with tablet or smartphone apps.The canvasser will try to contact each of the households on their list, and deliver a script containing questions and persuasive messaging provided by the campaign. Almost all election canvassing includes asking how a person plans to vote. Supporters may then be asked themselves to volunteer, or to take a lawn sign. Those who are wavering or undecided may be given a message of persuasion. If foot canvassing, the canvasser may also distribute flyers.
During the canvass, the results will be entered into the voter database. This will update the campaign's list of voters, removing those who have moved or are deceased and adding new residents who may have been found. The data on the questions will be used for further contact, a supporter may be added to a list for get out the vote or fundraising, while a hostile voter might be dropped from future contact.
It is important to remember to speak clearly and be personable while canvassing to create meaningful conversations and perhaps sway the undecided. Most canvassers are prepared with a thorough script that they use at the door. Most are encouraged not to go off-script in order to avoid making false claims or misrepresenting the party they are advocating for. It is important to identify one’s target audience, keep conversations courteous, and employ social engineering techniques to promote the message.
History
Origins
The origin of the term is an older spelling of "canvas", to sift by shaking in a sheet of canvas, hence to discuss thoroughly.An organized canvass can be seen as early as the elections in the Roman Republic. In those campaigns candidates would shake the hands of all eligible voters in the Forum. Whispering into the ear of some candidates would be a nomenclator, a slave who had been trained to memorize the names of all the voters, so that the candidate could greet them all by name.
Modern canvassing can be traced back to the rise of contested elections in England. For the first centuries of the English Parliament elections were rarely contested. Losing an election was considered a dishonor to oneself, and to friends and family. Campaigning thus involved quiet sounding out of the small pool of voters. Only once this process had convinced a candidate that he had enough votes to win would he declare his interest in the seat.
Beginning in the Elizabethan era, and expanding during the conflicts under the Stuarts, elections began to be openly contested. Canvassing was a controversial strategy. In both 1604 and 1626 canvassing for votes was banned. It was seen as a violation to free elections, as votes would be won by persuasion rather than a voter making up his own mind. Despite this, by the late 17th century, canvassing was standard practice in English elections. Rival campaigns would attempt a full canvass of all voters, which even in the largest districts would only be a few thousand people.
There were many reasons why candidates invested much time and money in canvassing. As in the previous tradition of sounding out supporters before announcing, many candidates would use the canvass to determine their level of support, and would drop out before election day if it proved insufficient. Part of the concern would be financial. Campaigning was expensive in an era when voters expected to be plied with food and drink. In this period the candidates had to cover the costs of the election itself. If candidates did not find enough votes during their canvass they would drop out before wasting more money on a losing campaign.
Building the list of voters was also important, as only some districts kept full poll books. Legal wrangling over who met the property requirements to vote was important in many campaigns, and canvassing was used to add supporters to the rolls, while investigating the claims of opponents. The growing list of supporters would also be essential to an election day operation. In early elections all voters had to travel to a central town, often some distance from their home, and polling could last several days. During this time voters would be away from their work and their fields. As an example of the challenges, one losing candidate had identified 639 supporters in Kent for the Short Parliament election of 1640, but only 174 voted, most going home after finding out the polling would take three days.
Persuasion and corruption
A candidate would also make sure to knock on as many doors as possible to win over the voters. Speaking to as many voters as possible was seen as an essential tool to win the "wavering multitudes."By the 18th century canvassing was standard practice, but this was also an era of gross electoral corruption, and canvassing was used to bribe and threaten voters, as famously depicted in William Hogarth's Humours of an Election series of paintings. Most directly this would take the form of direct bribes to voters. This was the practice in only a minority of districts, but in some areas large bribes had become habitual. In areas without direct bribery, candidates were expected to provide food, drink and banquets. For the priciest campaigns, these various costs added up to sums equivalent to several million pounds in today's money, causing financial hardship even for wealthy candidates.
In the first elections held in the United States, canvassing was rare. Most elections were uncontested, and even in races with multiple candidates it was considered improper for a candidate to campaign on his own behalf. As the party system developed in the early 19th century, elections became more contested and voluntary associations developed to work on candidates' behalf. As in the United Kingdom, canvassing became an important part of their operations, and they would attempt to visit each voter in a district.
This system soon became a venue for gross corruption. Machine politics developed in the large cities of the eastern US. Winning candidates would reward their supporters with patronage appointments, and direct bribery was also common; one study estimated that 20% of New York voters were compensated for their votes during Gilded Age elections.
In the United Kingdom, the Reform Act 1832 attacked corruption and expanded the franchise. This, combined with the growing strength of the national parties, transformed canvassing. There were no lists of who was eligible to vote under the new law, and it was up to individual voters to register themselves. The parties launched mass canvasses with the goal of adding all of the party's supporters to the electoral roll. As an example, in Norwich the 1874 saw 3000 Liberal and 2000 Conservative paid workers engaged in voter registration. The massive paid canvassing came to an end with the Corrupt and Illegal Practices Prevention Act 1883, which limited campaign spending. Thus the armies of paid canvassers were replaced with smaller volunteer efforts. Laws were also changed in the United Kingdom to make voter registration almost automatic, removing the need for the parties to expend efforts on it.
Voter identification and decline
As corruption faded, parties returned to using canvassing to win votes through persuasion and get-out-the-vote efforts. This was especially true of the new socialist parties such as the Labour Party in the United Kingdom, and the CCF in Canada who had little money but enthusiastic volunteer bases who could be deployed to door steps.The years after the Second World War saw a general decline in canvassing. Political scientists began to question the utility of traditional campaigns. The Michigan model of voter behaviour became the accepted wisdom. It argued that voters had deep-set partisan loyalties, and that changes in such loyalties take years to develop. A simple knock on the door will do nothing to change a voter's opinion. Parties thus switched their canvassing resources away from persuading voters, focusing only on identifying their supporters and making sure they voted. The British Labour Party adopted the Reading System developed by Ian Mikardo to win the Reading constituency in 1945. It was based on concentrating exclusively on pro-Labour areas and boosting their turnout, while ignoring non-supporters.
Even these approaches were found wanting. David Butler in his Nuffield Model of UK elections found that during the 1950s and 1960s, local campaigns had no effect on the results. With the rise of television, resources were shifted from the ground to mass market advertising, with canvassing seen as a relic of the past. Ivor Crewe argued that "constituency organizing counts for next to nothing in the television age." One political scientist wrote there was a belief that canvassing was an "elaborate ritual bringing some sense of gratification to the participants, but making no difference to election results."