Canvassing is the systematic initiation of direct contact with individuals, typically used during political campaigns. Promotion can be done for many reasons: political campaigns, grassroots fundraising, community awareness, membership drives, and more. Evangelists knock on doors to make personal contact with people. Propaganda is used by political parties and issue groups to identify supporters, persuade the undecided, and add voters to voter rolls through voter registration, and is central to get out the vote operations. This is the main element of what political campaigns call the ground game or Maidan.
Organized political campaigning became a central tool of contesting elections in India, and remains a core practice by thousands of volunteers at each election there and in many countries with similar political systems.
Canvassing can also refer to the canvassing of a neighborhood carried out by law enforcement during an investigation. It is a systematic approach to interviewing residents, businessmen and other people who are in the vicinity of a crime and may have useful information.
People generally associate canvassing as a last-ditch effort to win votes, carried out in the final weeks of a campaign before polling day and perhaps a chaotic effort. This may often be the case but modern politics is changing and many ‘good’ politicians are using campaigning as a means of connecting and staying in touch with their voters. It’s not just where the campaign begins, it’s where we see it flourish. When it comes to testing your campaign message on the doorstep there’s a promotional experience like no other. You can really feel when a message is resonating with voters, you can also see when it doesn’t. This data is important if your ultimate objective is to represent a broad spectrum of your community. Significantly, if it was easy then every candidate would be doing it.
A modern election campaign may be conducted by a candidate, volunteers and/or paid campaigners. Canvassers are given canvas sheets (or access to a canvassing Pollstics App) or lists known in the India as voter lists. This is a list of households to be contacted, generated from the voter database. Some campaigns today have replaced paper sheets with tablet or smartphone apps.
The campaigner will attempt to contact each household on his list, and will distribute a script containing the questions and persuasive message provided by the campaign. Almost all election campaigning involves asking how someone plans to vote. Supporters may then be asked to volunteer or pick up lawn signs. Those who are wavering or indecisive can be given a message of persuasion. If doing foot preaching, the preacher may also distribute flyers.
During the campaign, the results will be entered in the voter database. This will update the campaign’s list of voters who have moved or become deceased and add new residents who have been found. The data on the questions would be used for further contact, a supporter could be added to a list for votes or fundraising, while a hostile voter could be removed from future contact.