How does blockwalking work? I'm trying to understand "the point of it all"

Politics & Elections
1

I’m in a Texas suburb that went 51/47 Trump in 2020, and I’ll be attending a Happy Hour next week with a local Democrat group where one of the agenda items is organizing blockwalking Saturdays over the next few weeks. I’d like to get some of my questions out of the way now, before I end up in a social setting with these folks (where I presume most of them go way back together to 2020 and probably 2016).

I try to be reasonably friendly with the neighbors (wave hello when we’re rolling the trash bins out) but otherwise when I’m home I never answer the doorbell for anyone that I’m not expecting. Maybe that makes me weird, but I would guess that with blockwalking you’re gonna get a shit ton of doors not being answered even when the people are home. OK, no big deal.

Is the purpose of blockwalking to talk the people you meet into voting for Harris (that sounds kinda “preach”-y, doesn’t it)? If I’m just walking down the street knocking on one random door after another then what’s my “elevator pitch”?

Obviously if they answer the door wearing a red MAGA hat and an AR-15 over their shoulder then I’ll just ask if they have a weed eater or ladder I can borrow for the day. I can’t imagine the purpose of blockwalking is to try and change the minds of any MAGAts.

I assume that “who you voted for in the past” isn’t part of any public records, so there’s probably no way of “targeting” like-minded folks and just knocking on their doors. And even if there were, then you’re already preaching to the choir in terms of encouraging Democrats to vote Democrat, right?

I’m not even sure if here in Texas you have to register either R or D (obviously you have to declare one or the other when you go vote in the primaries). If you do, is that part of the public record? Maybe there’s some mechanism whereby you’re blockwalking and only knocking on doors of registered Democrats? But then I’m back to “preaching to the choir”.

It certainly won’t kill me to get out and hang with some like-minded folks and get some Saturday fresh air but I’m just trying to understand what the “return on investment” is with blockwalking.

2

Even if you know you are talking to a registered Democrat, your goal is to encourage them to vote. Registration and actual voting are not the same thing.

When Tom Wolf ran for governor of Pennsylvania in 2014 I talked to hundreds of people who were cannabis users. My goal was to inform them that Wolf had promised to start a Medical Marijuana Program in PA and to encourage them to help elect Wolf by voting for him and also encouraging friends to vote for him.

We did it!!!

3

who you voted for in the past is not public. But which which party you are registered in is public. And which primary you voted in is public. And who you gave money to (over some amount) is public. And whether you voted at all is public.

I’ve done door-to-door canvassing. I was actually on a zoom call last night for a group organizing door-to-door canvassing this fall. The organizer gives you a list of doors to knock. It’s not every door. Early in the season, it’s often to persuade people, or to find out which way people lean. Later in the season, it’s to encourage people who are likely to vote “your way” to vote at all. That may be people who answered the door previously and said they support your candidate, or it might be people in your party. Usually, the canvassers focus on people who sometimes vote, leaving the always-voters and the never-voters alone.

4

This 100%. NOBODY is changing their minds at this point. Your either a fascist or your not.

5

Oh, and in the past, the list of doors was always a sheaf of paper. Now it’s a phone app. I gather the app is not super convenient, but it has the huge advantage that you enter the data you collect directly into the database. (Data like, did they answer the door, did someone tell you that voter has moved, did they say their opinion on the political issues you are canvassing about.) Entering the data from the sheafs of paper used to be a huge volunteer job all by itself, and now that isn’t needed, and the data is updated right away. You can see right in the app which doors you have already knocked on, too.

6

Y’know, that’s actually brilliant and it hadn’t even crossed my mind that “there’s really two phases to it”.

Lots of other good points being made that I hadn’t thought of, so thanks - at least I can go into next week being able to ask “better” questions than I otherwise would have.

7

We are still early enough in the season that the goal might be to learn which way people are likely to vote, so as to know whom to target to remind to vote closer to the election.

8

I have a sign at my front door discouraging canvassers, proselytizers, and solicitors from even ringing my doorbell - it seems to work. I don’t want anyone from ether party coming around and discussing the election with me any more than I want the Mormons talking to me about their religion - I would recon the majority of people are like me, and I am in a purple-ish area of a deep blue state. The Trumpers have their flags and signs up, and the rest of us will quietly vote for Harris/Walz.

That said, I do admire the OP’s bravery for considering doing this activity in Texas.

9

There are, believe it or not, some fraction of people who are uninformed and uninterested even at this point in the election cycle, but who might vote if given a reason and some information about candidates’ positions that interests them.

Some of those who do doorknocking are trained at “deep canvassing” - being able to engage folks like this in conversation, find a point of common ground about the candidate they are canvassing for, and try to cultivate a relationship with followup and the like. It’s painful work - those folks deal with a lot of rejection because you need to cast a wide net to get just a few potential voters - but there can be significant results with a trained, personable and hard-working cadre of doorknockers.

I’m guessing the OP will be doing standard GOTV work rather than deep canvassing, but there really are some approaches that - for some voters - can help break through prevailing polarization that can make a difference in very close races - and hopefully down the road as well.

10

Why vote closer to the election? We know how we are going to vote. It’s not going to help with republican manipulation or the votes. They are gonna do it any way.

11

I don’t entirely follow this. Are you saying there’s no point in voting at all because the vote will be manipulated?

If not, i plan to canvass after “early voting” begins, so i can encourage sometime-voters to go vote right now. (Or tomorrow, or next Tuesday, or some other well-defined time in a well-visualized way.)

12

Just heard a comment from someone who said the candidate who just knocked out his incumbent Congresswoman in the primary two weeks ago had been making the rounds on his block, introducing himself and asking for support. He pointed out that the defeated Congresswoman had never shown up in that part of town for a rally, town meeting or anything else.

A lot of people want a personal connection even if they don’t want your candidate.

13

Probably. Your party registration certainly is in New York, but I don’t know whether this varies by state.

I think what was meant wasn’t “encourage them not to vote until the last minute”, but “go out when it’s closer to the election and encourage people who haven’t done yet to do so”.

14

@enipla, I think you misunderstood @puzzlegal. She wasn’t suggesting people vote closer to the election, she was saying they would remind them, closer to the election, to vote.

Also, ISTM that one other thing blockwalkers could do, especially this early, and in places like Texas, is to urge people who assume they are still registered to check and make sure they haven’t been dropped from the rolls.

15

The organizers will set you up with an app called MiniVAN. It tells you what houses to visit. You’ll only be talking to like-minded people, unless someone has moved or is in a mixed-politics houshold.

In Texas you don’t register R or D, and who you vote for is not public record. But what elections you voted in, including party-specific primaries is public. Also campaign donations are public info. So the app can make a decent guess of how likely someone is to vote, and whom they are likely to vote for.

Like others have said, your goal isn’t to change people’s minds. The goal is to remind people to check their voter registration status and to commit to showing up in November.

16

Polls don’t reliably tell you the winner of the election, but they’re greatly helpful to tell parties what to do to win.

Fivethirtyeight has the national average of polls at 46.3% for Harris and 43.7% for Trump. That’s only 90.0% of the total. Kennedy had 5.1% of the rest, leaving 4.9% for other or undecided.

To say that NOBODY is changing their minds at this point is flatly arealistic. It couldn’t be true because every polling aggregator has shown that Trump was leading after the RNC and he has fallen behind today. Fivethirtyeight has a graph of the running average from July 24 to today. On July 24 88.9% were for Trump or Harris, with Trump 44.9 and Harris 44.0%. On average, therefore, Harris has gained 2.3% and Trump has lost 0.3%. People are changing their minds.

Trump voters cannot all be categorized as fascists, tempting as it is to do. Some percentage can be peeled off the weakly supporting. Although Kennedy has stayed flat in these averages, more people always tell pollsters they’re going to vote for third party candidates than end up doing so. In 2020 only 1.9% did. Even if that doubles this year over 6% of the voters are in play.

158,429,361 people voted in 2020. Let’s make that a round 160,000,000. Each 1% is 1,600,000 people. 6% is 9,600,000 people. Peeling off a mere 2% of Trump votes is an additional 3,200,000 people. Total: 12,800,000 actual voters. I feel that’s a conservative number. In this unprecedented election, far more voters will make last minute decisions, just as large numbers of them always have in every election we have good polling for.

What party wouldn’t want a good hunk of 12,800,000 potential voters? Advertising is necessity. Phone banks are necessary. Rallies are necessary. Surrogate appearances are necessary. Mailers are necessary. Email blasts are necessary. Social media posts are necessary.

And blockwalking is necessary. People like face-to-face encounters. People will talk to other people about them. People will be reminded and encouraged to actually show up at the polls or vote by mail. How many people? No one knows. But a larger number than if the party doesn’t send out volunteers.

Wisconsin was won in 2020 by 20,000 votes. Some states may be that close this year. Every person turned from something else in these early polls to Harris is critical. The vote total on Nov. 5 is 100%, not 90%. Writing off ten percent of the voting population is just plain crazy.

17

Yeah. I shouldn’t put that label on folks. My BIL who I do like and consider a great guy… Is a, or was a Trump supporter. He’s a great cook, and knows how to work. And has been a CEO.

He hated Obama though. BIL would be considered ‘rich’ by most standards. I guess I am too, because retirement won’t be a problem.

Most of my wifes family are the same way. A few are seeing the light. Or at least questioning things. My wife feels quite ashamed of this.

The stink of being a Trump supporter will take a long time to wash off.