Drips and drabs that I’ve neglected to blog:
Thanks for muddying the waters, Globe.
The chorus of Muslim leaders condemning this kidnapping has been larger and louder than has been heard for some time. We hope that these voices of opposition to this crime will continue on behalf of all hostage victims until this practice stops. Often, more than 30 Iraqis a day are kidnapped, and the world doesn’t hear their voices or the voices of their families. They deserve attention and their freedom no less than Jill does. We hope this tide of opposition to criminal behavior will lead to the release of all other hostages as well. The Christian Science Monitor will not let these people be forgotten. The people of Iraq, and those risking their lives to help them, have a right to live in safety. [My emphasis.]
Gracious, compassionate and true. Thanks to every reporter who tries to bring us their stories; no thanks to those who try to deny that this is happening, or minimize its significance.
Welcome home, Jill.
I wonder how effective face-to-face grassroots campaigning is – canvassing, leafleting, sign-holding, and prosyletizing of various sorts – or at least under what conditions such activity persuades voters.
Yeah, I wonder, too. I understand that all that stuff is supposed to work … but I have to imagine that we could stand to innovate once in a while. How does one engage in campaigning while maintaining — even elevating — your own dignity and that of the person you’re trying to persuade? I don’t have a good answer. Anyone?
They quote Duke so they can continue to tie any criticism of the Israeli government to anti-semitism. For a solid rebuttal to the argument made in the report, take a look at this recent piece by Noam Chomksy.
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Huh.
Chomsky sliced and diced Kamm in his response to that piece, which was also published in Prospect. The published version of the response is available to Prospect subscribers only, but luckily you can also read it here. Kamm was just out of his league.
Yeah, I wonder, too. I understand that all that stuff is supposed to work … but I have to imagine that we could stand to innovate once in a while. How does one engage in campaigning while maintaining — even elevating — your own dignity and that of the person you’re trying to persuade? I don’t have a good answer. Anyone?
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Wait a sec… what is more dignified than having a one-on-one discussion with a neighbor about current issues?
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I’m not a big fan of pre-election-day sign holding, but I think that “grassroots” GOTV campaigns are effective, so long as voter turnout is as low as it is. If 95% of eligible registrants were registered and 95% of those voted, GOTV efforts would be radically different. But, so long as folks have to be sizzled in the ass with a cattle prod to go vote, “retail” politics are critical to winning, especially if you’re the challenger.
Yes, talking to neighbors is what it’s all about. I’m not questioning the value of retail politics at all — indeed, it’s much better than Big Media politics.
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But I wonder: How good are we at it? Can we do it better? How does one genuinely have a two-way conversation with someone at a door who wasn’t expecting you? I know I’m pretty bad at it myself — what’s the secret?
Well, that is certainly innovative.
I wonder how effective face-to-face grassroots campaigning is – canvassing, leafleting, sign-holding, and prosyletizing of various sorts – or at least under what conditions such activity persuades voters.
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Actually, this comment indicates a profound misunderstanding of what a field campaign is, how it works, what its goals are, and what results it produces. I’m rather busy today so I’m not going to post a long essay on the topic. This is a subject I intend to write a long post about someday, probably on MyDD but possibly here. Almost everyone who doesn’t do campaigns (even people who volunteer to canvass sometimes, but don’t actual take on lead roles like precinct captain) seems to have no clue what it’s all about, and is filled with assumptions that are understandable but actually impede their understanding. I’ve had something on this topic bubbling around in my head for a couple of years at least, and have given pieces of it in speeches, so eventually I hope to write it up.
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I will make one essential point, though: The purpose of canvassing varies, but in the typical case we deal with, persuasion through conversation is actually not a goal. At all. In many cases I’d even say it works against the goal, by being a huge time-sink.
b/c a lot of volunteers are in the dark.
In a democratic primary in a state rep district you might be looking at voter turnout of 6,000 – 8,000 depending on the district. From this, you can argue that to win, you must get 4,001 votes.
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In a state rep district, that’s only 10% of the population, so you really don’t need to worry about persuading every voter that you are the right candidate for the job. What you need to do is FIND the 4,001 voters who will vote for you and then get them to the polls.
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A solid field campaign will spend the months before the election ID’ing those voters and keeping track of who they are (and where they live). During this part of canvassing, the volunteer going door-to-door will be offering information and educating the voter at the door and will ask, “can we count on your vote on election day?” If the answer is yes, then great. The voter gets added to the list of IDs. If the answer is no, the volunteer moves on. It’s more time-effective to try the next door than to try and change this person’s mind. And if the answer is maybe, then that door will have information sent to them and will be knocked on again in the hopes of getting a “yes” answer the next time the question is asked.
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*Note that the key here is education, not persuasion. The volunteer is telling an uninformed voter about the candidate and looking for a match, not trying to change anyone’s mind. This is where message and communication come into play, but that’s a topic for another post.
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On election day, the campaign will harrass the hell out of their ID’d voters until they vote. The campaign will have volunteers at the polls checking names off their ID lists so that they know when their supporters have voted. They’ll have people working phone banks calling the ID’d voters and reminding them to vote. And finally, they’ll have people going door-to-door, especially from 5-8pm, litterally pulling out the votes.
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For an example of the effectiveness of this: in 2004, Carl Sciortino’s campaign had, in the final hours of voting, over 100 people going door-to-door to pull out the vote. Sciortino beat Vinny Ciampa by 94 votes. It’s safe to assume that at some point during the day, each of those volunteers got one person to vote who otherwise wouldn’t have. (I wasn’t actually there, but I know a lot of people who were involved with that campaign.)
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As was said earlier, if we had better voter turnout rates, this wouldn’t be effective. But in elections with such low percentages of people voting, this becomes an incredibly cost-effective (yet time-consuming) means to win an election.
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This is a pretty broad overview and the numbers will change depending on a variety of factors, but I think it captures the gist of it. Cos, anything to add?
Plenty to add. I could go on about this for days 🙂
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Your summary is basically right, though with a different slant than I’d give.
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Sometimes early canvasses do “light persuasion”, but later on when most of the canvassing is happening… we may call it “voter education”, but it’s just identification really. The fact that someone showed up on their door may be persuasive to someone who’s open to the possibility, but beyond that, doing any persuasion through conversation is just a time sink.
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“Education” may happen if they ask questions, but mostly, it’s just getting the message out: the canvasser says the same things that the flyer they leave says, which are the same things any ads in the local paper (or on TV or radio, in bigger campaigns) say, and are the same things they try to get into newspaper articles. Targeted voters are getting these things in the mail, too. They shouldn’t be hearing anything new from a canvasser unless they’re interested enough to ask questions. Again, the mere fact that a canvasser stopped by may be what gets them to actually look at the next piece of campaign mail they get from the candidate. But persuading people through talking to them is not the point.
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Then there’s the GOTV canvass, in which the point isn’t to identify, but to turn out a voter. In some ways, every canvass is a GOTV canvass, because the more you visit someone, the more likely they are to vote – which does mean you have to be careful with how you target your ID canvass: you don’t a high percentage of people likely to vote for your opponent(s). The exact transition from ID to GOTV is an art & a craft.
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And, as I said, there are “light persuasion” canvasses. And also first pass vs. second pass ID canvassing, and retargeting, and microtargeting, and …
There are lots of books that discuss campaigning and GOTV tactics. One that actually details controlled experimentation on the matter is “Get Out The Vote” by Donald Green and Alan Gerber. They cover a variety of partisan and non-partisan GOTV efforts and use controlled research methods to determine how effective various GOTV efforts actually are.
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Their results show that to get 1 additional vote you can either:
canvass 14 houses
make 20-50 volunteer phone calls
send 133 mail pieces
or make 2,000 robo-calls