Whatever it takes, no matter how boring, distasteful, or tedious:
Deep canvassing is when volunteers and organizers engage in extended, empathetic conversations, with the goal of combating prejudice and shifting beliefs. (The typical door-to-door canvasser, by contrast, gives a brief spiel, asks how you’re voting, and moves on.) A growing body of academic research finds that deep canvassing done in person and by phone can have a real, measurable effect on changing hearts and minds. And in a time when so many of our conversations feel shitty and shallow despite the embarrassment of platforms on which we can have those conversations, deep canvassing offers a promising alternative, a way to find common ground and make human connections in a time of political polarization and tribalism.
Even in a pandemic…
[Researchers] Broockman and Kalla ran experiments using the traditional tools of politics — short phone calls, brief door-to-door canvassing, and TV ads — and found that they typically had almost no lasting effect on changing the mind of a typical voter.
But the experiments that Broockman, who now teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, and Kalla, who teaches at Yale, ran involving deep canvassing told a different story. They’ve now conducted half a dozen major studies and, each time, as the data come in, they find measurable effects on prejudice and certain public policies that last much longer than the TV ads and short-form canvassing. One of the key ingredients, they say, is stories — about a marginalized group of people, about a time you were treated differently, but really any personal story. Another was showing respect to the person on the other end of the conversation, no matter how much you disliked or disagreed with them. “We just kept finding in study after study these results,” Broockman says. “Every time we do this, we seem to find this again and again and again.”
That conclusion applies to phone canvassing. In a paper published in January, they found that deep canvassing done by phone also succeeded at reducing prejudice — specifically, in this particular study, transphobia. Although the measurable effects on reducing prejudice were slightly less pronounced than those seen in studies that used in-person canvasses. Those effects persisted for at least a month after the initial deep-canvassing conversation. “The conversations over the phone lasted just as long, in terms of efficacy, as a conversation in person,” Kalla says.
Heartened by the encouraging results of Broockman and Kalla’s research, George Goehl, the director of People’s Action, the populist grassroots group, told me that he and his colleagues had envisioned a massive ramping-up of deep-canvassing work in the 2020 election year.
Far be it from me to argue with valid empirical research. If it works, it works. But it sure sounds like a lot of effort for very little payoff.
As a liberal and progressive, I know I should be all for engagement, debate, and persuasion. But I’ve engaged KKK members one-on-one. I’ve engaged homophobes and Islamophobes. I’ve found them to be utterly dishonest debating opponents who lie, mislead and misquote. And, just when you think you have persuaded them, you find out they’ve been playing you for a sucker. They are perfectly capable of lying to a researcher that their views have changed.
But sure, there’s nothing wrong with being nice if it works. But if something else is demonstrated to be even more effective at defeating Trumpism — say, rallying the Democratic and liberal majority in this country with great proposals and great rhetoric — let’s not waste our time engaging the MAGA gang merely because it makes us feel good to do it.