Canvassing for obama

I spent a few hours yesterday knocking on doors, with clipboard and pamphlets on hand. It's the first time I've ever been canvassing, so I was a bit nervous (I have social anxiety), but by the end I felt fairly comfortable ringing the doorbell of a complete stranger who might hate the political candidate I was invading their space to promote.

I think my biggest room for improvement is in trying to make the conversations a bit longer. I don't like taking up people's time, especially when I can see they don't want to spend much. So trying to find a way to convey a more complete message while not annoying potential voters is a challenge.

I ran into a few McCain supporters, and in most cases I actually had to tease out their preference. The data I had to collect was more detailed than just "Not Obama," so I had to ask "So, McCain or a third party?" A few of the die-hard McCain supporters were rude, but since we were targeting undecideds there was no reason to try to engage them after their opinions were voiced. On the whole, the undecideds were very nice to talk to, and seemed to have done a fair bit of research on all of the candidates. I actually met two libertarians, too!

I'll be doing some phone banking and perhaps data entry this week for the campaign as well. Right now the focus is completely on undecided voters. This means giving them information, registering them to vote, and keeping an accurate list of undecideds by updating it as part of the phone banking or canvassing process (if a voter has decided either way, we don't need to target them). It's all very impressive and organized.

It was a great feeling to be able to put some of my anxiety and frustration about the election into some action, and meeting people in the community really made me feel more connected and hopeful for this country.