I am sure you guys are sick to death of post-mortem pieces on Maine from me, but I promise just this one more, since I think there are some implications for all campaigns re field operations.
Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, who volunteered in Maine for the No On 1 campaign, has a piece in The Democratic Strategist about the field campaign in Maine. You can read the entire thing here, but there are a few nits I want to pick and two interesting ideas in it, particularly if you're a field geek.
Jasmine, who talked to a straight couple at the door about their feelings on Question 1, writes:
Walking away, I rated her as a "three," or swing voter, and him as a "four," or likely to vote yes. According to a literal interpretation of the campaign playbook, this conversation had actually been a waste of time in every regard except one: the campaign now knew not to spend time and resources doing further outreach to this couple. At this point in the campaign cycle, an exacting calculus kicks in and attention shifts to turning out identified supporters, "one's" and "two's" on the scale. All other voters are lumped together and categorized as unwinnable. For the next five weeks, this couple and voters like them would not hear directly from the campaign, except in TV ads. This is considered smart organizing, and typically it is.
To my knowledge, campaigns- including No On 1- don't ignore threes. Threes, by definition, are considered prime undecided voters, are still considered movable and worth spending resources on.
On the potential to persuade swing voters, she writes:
We are losing because we are not persuading swing voters, yes. But that does not mean they cannot be persuaded. People change their views on this issue all the time, as family members and friends respond to a LGBT person's coming out, or as church congregations vote to become open and affirming. Sometimes it takes years and sometimes it takes weeks. Rarely does it happen without a mixture of love, pain and patience. In these more intimate contexts, we call it transformation rather than "persuasion" and it doesn't happen due to canvassing and phonebanking. It happens when the truths of someone's life transcend the doctrine they believe in. Some parts of this process we can map and some remain mysterious to us. It is, after all, the work of the heart we are talking about here.
I agree with her that sometimes these life events change people's minds. But what's the point here? In a political campaign context, it doesn't seem wise to eternally hold out hope that that will happen and thus keep spending resources on people who tell you straight-up they aren't voting your way. In some contexts, like Washington State, the campaign literally lasts a matter of weeks. When you are perpetually underfunded and without enough staff/volunteers, you just can't try relentlessly to persuade swing voters in the hopes that their gay co-worker or daughter or minister will come out in the midst of your efforts.
Jasmine has an interesting proposal regarding changing the way campaigns talk with swing voters- essentially arguing that instead of volunteers, the campaign will recruit special outreach people, particularly ministers who live in-state, and train them in empathic listening skills and engaging with people around faith. The campaign will then assign them a universe of swing voters to track through election day. They will engage them in door-to-door, phone and try and develop a personal rapport, not with scripts, but with intensive personal conversations.
While this is certainly a good idea, my question is to what extent campaigns already implement it. I am not someone who is a veteran of many field operations in campaigns, but from those I have been on, campaigns to some extent, already utilize people of faith, union members, African-Americans- whatever segment you need to talk to voters, and assign them certain precincts to walk, events to attend, and so forth. What's novel about Jasmine's proposal is the training is the emphasis on special volunteer training and personal rapport development. That's different from assigning an African-American to canvass African-American precincts with just a walk script. I don't know how much time a campaign has to implement this kind of outreach, though, and I don't know what will be different in terms of voter contact. If a specially trained minister volunteer approaches a religious voter and discovers him to be a four or a five, should the minister then proceed as a normal campaign would and decrease or stop the amount of outreach, even after a personal, empathic conversation? Or continue in an effort to "develop personal rapport" with the voter?
Encouraging abstention. If a voter replies that they are against your position, ask if they would consider abstaining from that particular election or that column on the ballot. Jasmine's logic is that one less opposition vote is almost as good as vote for your side. And you remind voters that legislators already abstain, so why can't they? This is one idea that's particularly worth exploration.
If anyone has thoughts on these experimentations in field, or if they've already been implemented in your experience, please do share in the comments.
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