Knock on EVERY Door

An old/new strategy that works

By Bruce Watson

CHAMPAIGN-URBANA, IL — When it comes to canvassing, the sheer number of doors can discourage the most dedicated activist.  Knock here, no one home.  Knock there, ditto.  Skip the next door — not on the list.  Knock again. . .  But a unique canvassing program in the heart of America’s heartland has a different strategy, one that works.

Forget those lists of “likely voters.”  Forget knocking once or twice and writing off the rest of the neighborhood.  Knock on every door.

“Knocking on every door to find who will vote for your candidate is the most important thing you can do to win an election,” says Esther Patt, Democratic activist in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois.  “You can’t wait for voters to come you.  You have to go out and find them.”

Patt has worked on every political campaign in Champaign-Urbana since moving there in 1973 to attend the University of Illinois.  She knows all the shortcuts, all the excuses, all the “good enough” canvassing tricks that lose elections.  That’s why, when voter turnout in this student-saturated district fell drastically during the Obama years, Patt lobbied for years to knock on more doors, and in 2018 finally contacted The People’s Agenda.

“In our ten campus precincts, we had 4,000 voters in 2012, half the number we’d had in 2004,” Patt said.  “And in 2012, the Republican challenger for Congress won by 1,002 votes.  If we had only had the same turnout. . . ”

In 2014, GOP Congressman Rodney Davis was re-elected by 37,000 votes, and again, by 60,000 votes, in 2016.  That’s when Esther Patt came up with a new/old strategy — to knock not just on more doors but on every door.

Both political parties, Patt says, canvass the wrong targets.  “The Democrats reach out to likely voters, undecideds, and a few Republicans they hope they can swing.”  This strategy misses more votes than it gathers, Patt says, because legions of potential voters are A) registered at the wrong address; B) unsure of voting logistics; or C) uninformed and reluctant to vote.

All three groups can be gathered, wooed, and won by knocking on every door. “Nothing is more effective,” Patt says.  “You can put all the tables you want on campus or at the mall, and people walk right past them.  You have to make contact, and door-to-door is the best way to do it.”

In 2018, taking Patt’s idea, The People’s Agenda knocked on all 10,000 doors in ten campus precincts, including apartments which party organizers often write off.

To reach this goal, The People’s Agenda used a strategy called “Adopt-a-Precinct.”  Recruiting ten local cohorts, including Moms Demand Action, Bend the Arc, and ad hoc groups from other organizations, they assigned each to a precinct.  And instead of hurried canvassers hitting doors on a list, leaving brochures, moving on, each adopting group was fully responsible for every door in its precinct.  When no one was home, when whole afternoons passed with few contacts, canvassers went back again.  And again.  Until they made personal contact with everyone behind every door.

The result:  The Republican won again, not by 60,000 votes, just 2,000.  But four county offices flipped to the Democrats. The local Democrats got word and despite COVID in 2020, knocked and knocked. All but one of county wide offices wend blue. Finally in 2022, they kept knocking, and Democrat Nikki Budzinksi handily defeated her GOP opponent.

But wait.  Doesn’t knocking on every door mean coming face-to-face with (gasp!) Republicans?  Patt has an approach that transcends red and blue.  Because half of all voters are Independents, she instructs canvassers to avoid mentioning political affiliation.  Instead they ask, “Do you sometimes vote for Democrats?”

If the resident grumbles “No way!,” it’s “thank you” and don’t go back.  But if the resident says “Yes,” the conversation can begin.

“Did you vote in the last election?  At this address?”

In mobile America, especially in a college town like Champaign-Urbana, many voters move and forget to re-register.  Political parties, drawn to getting out long-time voters at the same address, miss such potential voters.  But it gets worse.  Studies show that people most likely to have moved since the last election are Democrats, young voters, and people of color.  All major Democratic constituencies.

Knocking on every door brings voters out of the woodwork and into the polling place.  And once re-registration is finished, the canvasser can finally ask, “what issues are you interested in?  Well, let me tell you about Democrat. . .”

With both parties hustling to digitize and download every likely voter, Patt’s idea to knock on every door might seem new.  But it’s really just old school ward politics brought into the 21st century.  Patt saw it back in Chicago when, while still in high school, she worked for a mayoral candidate challenging the Daley machine.  (The challenger lost.)

“The machine paid canvassers to knock on every door.  It was illegal to use public funds that way but they did it.  We’re just doing the same, but with volunteers.”

Congressman Nikki Budzinski is running for re-election this year.  Though she is  favored, the Democratic Party, carrying on what Esther Patt started, plans once again to knock on all 10,000 doors in the ten campus precincts, and a lot more doors in the rest of the district.

READ MORE OF “WHAT WORKS” IN THE GRASSROOTS CONNECTOR