Experience canvassing in NH yesterday and some advice

[HerbChestnut]

So let me start off by saying that yesterday was my 2nd time ever canvassing, the first being a couple of weeks ago in Conway. This time, the campaign needed people in the Durham area, so I drove down from Bangor, Maine with my girlfriend and one of our other friends to do what we could.

The campaign office was situated in someone's home that they generously offered up for use. We parked down the road and went inside, surprised to see such an organized campaign effort taking place in someone's living room. But this is where some of the problems began.

We were briefly greeted by several campaign workers and without any formal introductions asking about us or where we came from we were each handed a manila folder containing a list of addresses to visit. Three people, three folders. Now, I'll remind you this was only mine and my girlfriend's second time canvassing, and our friend hadn't canvassed since 2008. We were over a hundred miles from home and completely unfamiliar with the area. It was never in our plans to split up for the day.

When I tried to explain that to the guy working the desk with the folders, I was basically ignored. We were given 2 walking routes and 1 driving route, which would become problematic later on, and were told to do the best we could. So after a brief overview of canvassing strategy we were released into the wild, so to speak.

The three of us decided that since we were all fairly inexperienced as canvassers that we would stick together for at least one of the planned routes. Since the driving route was closest (and difficult to do on your own anyhow) we decided to complete that one first.

It took us 4 hours.

There were *a lot* of houses on that list, more than we had expected. I won't go into much detail about the actual canvassing other than to say we encountered a lot of great people who were enthusiastic about voting for Bernie. There was one guy who refused to answer my knocks even though his door was open, we had made eye contact, and he was sitting on his living room couch staring at me. I made sure to leave a couple Bernie pamphlets on his door. Anyway the actual canvassing went great, but it just took so...damn...long to get one route completed.

So here's my unprofessional and inexperienced advice first to canvassers and then to the campaign.

Canvassers: If you're going in a group, try to get a walking route if you can. This will allow you to split up and hit more doors in less time while staying close enough to each other in case something weird happens. A driving route is great for a single canvasser or two with a car.

Campaign: Please get to know your volunteers better. This will allow you to give them tasks that they can complete more efficiently based on their experience and skills. In my example above, had we been given all walking routes instead of one of them being a driving route, we wouldn't have been tempted to do the driving route together, wasting valuable time. It just so happened that the last few houses on the driving route were on roads that we could park the car and walk to, which was not the case for the vast majority of the list. Those houses went very quickly because we figured out we could split up within the neighborhood without feeling our safety was threatened. Perhaps more experienced canvassers wouldn't have had this problem, but we're new and so our method was not as efficient as it could have been.

All in all, I thought yesterday went well, but it could have gone a lot better. I feel like we could have visited more houses had we been given better routes, but that really comes down to our lack of experience and lack of communication with the campaign.

I hope this helps anybody who's thinking of canvassing for the first time or any campaign workers hoping to improve canvassing performance of their volunteers.

[swilton]

1. Thanks for telling us your story

I intend to post this to my Keene, NH f/b group. I think it needs further circulation....This is a learning process!

[barbtries]

2. thank you for sharing.

I hope the campaign listens to you. I think that Bernie's campaign includes a lot of people who are relatively new. Thank you very much for being so dedicated.

[swilton]

3. Yes, the campaign does include people new

as well as young...

On some levels as part of the older generation I feel discarded. But the youth will have to carry the torch.

What I've also experienced, at least in southern NH, is people coming from out of state. I've had an American University student, an academic and a NYorker all staying here just to be able to contribute to the campaign. And what they're telling me is that they are in contact with foreign students (i.e., Danes, Germans) which really tells you a lot about this movement. Through the Iowa video tapes I've seen Latino students at work...Finally, there are NUMEROUS volunteers coming over from Vermont - we've been asked if we can use people from Rhode Island and Maine, and students coming in from Amherst, Mass.

[eridani]

4. A possibility when houses on walklists are farflung

Have a driver and a walker. The driver can do phonebanking when waiting for the walker to finish a house.

[HerbChestnut]

7. That's a great idea.

There were three of us too, which was definitely unnecessary to go door to door. Two is enough.

[Duckfan]

5. Awesome lesson on canvassing

But remember there are a lot of houses in city areas where you can cover 3-4 blocks in a 90 minute time frame-on both sides of street. I also wanted to go with someone last time I did it. Stage fright of who will answer door and their response.

[HerbChestnut]

6. Right, and that's more of what I was expecting.

But this was in a suburban town (Newmarket) with a lot of new development. So these types of towns typically have a couple main roads with houses scattered on them (our driving route) plus small offshoot neighborhoods filled with nice new houses (walking routes). I bet if we had been given all walking routes we could have hit twice as many houses as we did with the driving route.