Your campaign should engage your voters in many different ways. But, in order to win and secure votes, you will need to contact voters multiple times, across different media.
The doorstep is possibly the most important of all of these. Through posters, leaflets, television, and print media, voters have an opportunity to be introduced to you and hear your policy positions. However, door to door campaigning is the only opportunity that they have en masse to engage and challenge you and your canvass team, allowing the opportunity to win those swing votes, and assuage any doubts.
A second key aspect that sets canvasses apart from other forms of engagement is the opportunity it allows you and your team to gather data that could be the crucial difference on polling day.
Prior to the campaign, you should ensure that you do canvassing training with everyone who intends to be out on the doors. Some role-playing and constructive advice from all present can help everyone make certain they’re playing their best game once the campaign begins.
Below we will run through an outline of the ideal doorstop interaction. Be sure to remember, though, to be confident in your own opinion of cultural differences - there is no one size fits all, and you should adapt the below to suit your campaigns particular needs!
A canvass is a conversation between two people. There are of course some differences, but there are many more similarities!
The campaign's strategy team will have outlined to you how they wish for you to approach a canvass. This may involve asking particular questions or probing for feeling on a specific policy. While each campaign will have its own strategy and needs, you’ll likely be looking to gather most, if not all, of the following:
It will often not be possible to do all of the above, but a candidate isn’t elected from one interaction. By working your way through interactions like these, you will be able to segment your voter database, identify supporters and key trends; as well as ensure that your canvassers can have meaningful engagements with voters, on topics that they care about.
If you would like to know more about getting the most out of your canvass, why not sign up now.
Listening to our current users, we are aware that there can be an internal struggle of team management when it comes to organizing quickly. To get people out on doors, the back and forth over Whatsapp, Messenger, and (insert other apps here) can be endless. We aim to streamline this process for you with Ecanvasser. Now organizers can commit via the Walk app (their canvassing app!) and get notified in the run-up to the event so that they don’t forget. By building it into the door knocking process life has gotten a lot easier for campaign managers.