Simply put, the standard of canvassing on Irish doorsteps is unlike that of anywhere else in the world and Irish politicians place a premium on the best canvass volunteers each election cycle. Brendan Finucane, CEO of Ecanvasser, a canvassing tech product designed to streamline the ground game process, grew up canvassing for Irish candidates and has the skills of the doorstep running in his blood.

His work on campaigns and, particularly on canvassing outreach, led him to the realization that the traditional way of running campaigns was broken. He witnessed first-hand how information was being lost and campaign managers were not getting sufficient detail back from field operations to allow them to make smart decisions. In fact, smart canvassing is one of the big stories of 2016 with Ted Cruz being lauded for his ground game efforts in Iowa last month and the #Imwithher camp doing incredible work in maintaining Hillary Clinton's lead in the race for the Democratic nomination.

Canvassing technology is changing rapidly with increased spending by candidates on face-to-face interactions with voters and on voter targeting methods to maximize these interactions. Finucane’s Ecanvasser harnesses the power of ground game efforts for campaigns and allows candidates to use the ‘gift of the gab’ to convince voters of the need to vote and to vote for them.

2016 is set to be the biggest spending year in US political history and, for Finucane, the principal challenge is ensuring as many candidates as possible are using canvassing to lead the charge in their campaigns.

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