Clueless Canvasser Conjecture
Why on Earth are door-to-door political canvassers a thing in the DC suburbs?
A recent Bastiat’s Window post (“Electile Dysfunction”) asked why door-to-door presidential campaign canvassers exist in the Washington, DC metropolitan area, where residents are highly knowledgeable (and opinionated) about politics and nearly certain to vote without prompting. I offered two theories, and a friend wrote to offer a third, which I now suspect is the most important answer—especially when amplified by further assumptions.
“Electile Dysfunction” said:
“It is unlikely that a single undecided voter exists within a 50-mile radius of the White House. I live just five miles from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and yet, for mysterious reasons, at each presidential election, dewy-eyed young activists show up at my front door, literature in hand, hoping to present the case for one party’s nominee or the other. I have two theories to explain their motivations:
[1] These youths are naïve and narcissistic enough to believe themselves capable of persuading a DC-area resident to change his or her vote; or
[2] They hold no such delusions and are merely compiling an enemies list—cataloging who should be subjected to lawfare or doxxing once their party assumes power.”
An astute friend wrote to say:
[3] “Another, and perhaps the most reasonable explanation for going door-to-door canvassing for a candidate: you need a job that pays $19/hour.”
I thought my friend’s theory had great merit, but it left unanswered another question: “Why on Earth would a presidential campaign pay $19/hour to canvassers whose door-to-door efforts will add almost no additional voters to the candidate’s total—and who will more likely annoy the residents whose peace and quiet is disturbed by unwanted visitors ringing their doorbells?”
When pondering this, it also occurred to me that the canvassers who show up at my door are generally sloppily attired and rhetorically inept—hardly paragons of persuasion. Then, a complementary hypothesis occurred to me:
[4] “A high percentage of door-to-door canvassers are recruited from the population of low-information, politically disinterested, income-challenged voters. A presidential campaign hires such people not to inform and motivate the residents whose doorbells the canvassers ring, but rather to inform and motivate the otherwise apathetic canvassers who ring the doorbells. In other words, campaigns effectively pay canvassers to canvass canvassers. Once recruited, there is likely a multiplier effect, as the newly-literate canvassers become True Believers and nag their equally apathetic friends to vote for the candidate who paid the canvasser.”
I’m not suggesting that my Clueless Canvasser Conjecture is a universal truth. No doubt, there are areas of the country where get-out-the-vote efforts, in fact, bear substantial fruit, even in presidential elections. And canvassers may, in fact, inform and motivate voters in more obscure political races. (For example, I’ll admit to having been poorly informed until recently about a couple of special legislative elections in my city.) But to explain why a campaign would pay someone to inform residents of upscale DC-area neighborhoods that Donald Trump is running against Kamala Harris (or that Trump favored border control and Harris opposed the overturn of Roe v. Wade), my friend’s suggestion plus my conjecture may form an Occam’s Razor—the simplest, and therefore likeliest, explanation.
For an additional thought exercise: Why do ostensibly nonpartisan, taxpayer-funded NGOs pay similarly unkempt, inarticulate canvassers to conduct door-to-door campaigns; and do such efforts indirect impact voting in partisan elections (e.g., higher awareness and turnout by canvassers and friends)?
I live no where near DC, and I can assure you that door-to-door canvessers for anything fail to motivate me and nearly always are at least mildly annoying. Door-to-door anything these days seems both useless and possibly dangerous. Now how's that for cynicism? I'm sad to say that I am afflicted.
For years the only canvassers we would get were from Ohio Citizen Action, which vaguely promised lower utility rates, "green" energy and other warm fuzzies. For the two years that I was a vendor to the electric company, I paid them no mind. Now canvassers typically hang out in front of the county offices (title bureau, bureau of motor vehicles, driver's license station, etc.) and are soliciting signatures for a referendum to place a measure on the ballot. Sometimes these efforts are worthwhile — a citizen's referendum banned smoking in public places and other times they are bizarre — the marijuana laws in this state are strange due to the referendum of a few years back that didn't constitutionally enshrine marijuana but instead codified the Ohio Revised Code, which can be changed by the Ohio General Assembly at any time. The next citizens initiative that needs to collect signatures is "to abolish property taxes." Your state laws may vary.