About Door to Door Canvassing

Gary Brown
Gary Brown
  • Updated

In This Article

Things You Will Need To Do For Door to Door Canvassing

 

    

Overview

Door to door canvassing is the art of walking through a neighborhood to engage with voters at their homes on behalf of a political organization or campaign. It is not an easy activity to coordinate or manage, but it has been proven to be one of the most effective voter outreach methods and is generally considered well worth the effort.

What separates door to door canvassing from other forms of voter communications is the ability to talk face to face with voters while observing various details about their home environment you may not pick up from a phone call or text message response. With the help of the PDI Connect mobile application, all of the key data elements from the conversation and observed details can be recorded and immediately sent back to the PDI platform.

Door to door canvassing involves the execution of a variety of tasks to be performed at different times and using different parts of the PDI platform. While the list of tasks may seem extensive, it's important to remember that the complexity of each task can be adjusted based on your needs. You have the flexibility to simplify or expand the process as necessary.

When done well, door to door canvassing can generate a huge amount of valuable survey data worth its weight in gold. And like gold, it often entails a huge effort and commitment to acquire.

Things You Will Need To Do For Door to Door Canvassing

In its simplest form, door to door canvassing consists of volunteers walking small neighborhood areas with a list of voters to survey. All of the tasks that make door to door canvassing possible essentially fall under these three components: volunteers (Canvassers), a small neighborhood (Turfs), and a list of voters to survey (Voter Data). When you are able to manage and coordinate each of these components, your campaign will be ready for door to door canvassing.

 

     

Key Tasks for Door to Door Canvassing

  1. Volunteers (Canvassers)
    1. Recruit Volunteers to canvass: Volunteers need to be contacted, recruited, and scheduled to work a canvassing shift. The PDI Volunteer Management tool makes it easy to track and manage your volunteers and their canvassing activity.
    2. Train Canvassers: To maximize the effectiveness and productivity of your volunteers, they will need to be trained on best practices for using the PDI Connect mobile app and door to door canvassing engagement. Well trained volunteers usually perform better and have a more positive canvassing experience. 
    3. Assign Canvassers to Turfs: Assigning canvassers to geographic turfs requires coordinating working canvassers and the turfs that need to be assigned. As a door to door canvassing manager, you will need to make decisions on what type of turf you plan to utilize for assignments and the assignment workflow method.
    4. Review Canvasser Work: After the canvassers have sent data back to the PDI platform account, you will likely want to assess and evaluate the quality of their work before it is merged with your other voter flag data. The PDI platform has tools specifically designed for approving door to door canvassing data.
  2. Voter Data and Surveys
    1. Identify the list of voters to canvass. Every campaign and organization should approach door to door canvassing with a target universe of voters in mind that aligns with their overall outreach strategy. The list of voters will need to be built from the Create Voter Universes module but you can expand the list to include all voters in the house for added value. Universes used in door to door canvassing tend to be larger than universes used in other forms of outreach that have a proportional associated cost such as postal mail and phone calling.
    2. Create Survey Questions and Script: When a canvasser finally makes it to the door of their targeted voters, they should have the guidance of a well crafted script with effective talking points and survey questions to enhance the experience. Creating and managing surveys can be accomplished from the Admin Menu → Flag and Survey page.
  3. Turf Areas
    1. Cut Turf: While we encourage users to canvass with the prebuilt PDI Turfs or voter precincts to save time and avoid having to spend many hours cutting turf, we understand that some organizations still prefer to manually cut custom turfs to meet very specific specifications. 
    2. Identify Priority Turfs: The most overlooked task in door to door canvassing is identifying priority turfs that possess the most potential in reaching more targeted voters that will respond favorably to your survey. Higher density of houses with targeted voters allows canvassers to knock on more doors and reach more voters.

There is no specific order in which these tasks need to be executed as long as all of them are ready when a canvassing shift begins. Make sure to leave plenty of time to cut turfs (if necessary) and recruit canvassers. These tasks will take more time to perform than the other tasks on this list.