THE ART OF CAMPAIGNING: DOOR KNOCKING EDITION

David Parker, April 14, 2025

Carolyn Leggo asked if I’d be open to taking suggestions for these blogs/rants/Substacks. Since I’ve committed to writing one every day for three years, I’m more than happy to take recommendations—especially from the people of Take Back Alberta, who have risen up and are defying the decay of our democracy by getting involved. Not to support politicians, but to learn how our system works and how they can help fix it.

The question was a long one, but it boiled down to this: what’s the real impact of door knocking, and what’s its purpose from the perspective of a local campaign? Any seasoned campaigner will tell you that door knocking is the ultimate weapon. The best candidates go out for hours every day, personally asking voters for support at the doorstep. Door knocking is the bread and butter of local campaigns. With phone calls getting less effective—thanks to call display, call control, and people just not answering unknown numbers—door knocking matters more than ever.

Campaign managers often do a bad job explaining the real purpose of door knocking. I’ve met plenty of volunteers who are nervous because they don’t know all the issues or aren’t comfortable talking to strangers. I get it—as a homeschooler who grew up in a small community, I’ve been there. But I’ve personally knocked on tens of thousands of doors, and here’s what I’ve learned: your job isn’t to convince people of anything. Your job is to gather data. That data is the foundation of any local campaign.

Any political campaign in a modern democracy breaks down into three phases:

1. Pre-Launch: This is where you recruit the candidate (unless it’s a re-election), fundraise to make sure you have the resources to run, recruit volunteers, build community presence, and assign key roles—CFO, Campaign Manager, GOTV Chair, Volunteer Coordinator, etc.

2. Persuasion and Voter ID: This is the bulk of the campaign. There are two key goals here: First, make the case for why your candidate should be elected. But with fewer people actually engaging in local politics, that persuasion job has mostly shifted to the party leader. Voters don’t care about local resumes the way they used to—they vote based on the party brand and the leader. Second, and more important for local campaigns, is identifying your supporters.

3. Get Out The Vote (GOTV): The final phase. It’s all about getting your identified supporters to the polls. And its success depends on how well you did in the first two phases.

So why is door knocking important?

Because it’s still the best tool we have for identifying supporters. It’s not about persuading people—if you’re trying to change minds at the door, you’re doing it wrong. Think about it: are you likely to be convinced by a stranger at your door? Probably not. And even if you are, the time it takes to persuade someone isn’t worth it. The goal is to identify as many existing supporters as possible. That’s it. A successful day of door knocking is one where you log a lot of supporter data.

A local campaign is only as strong as its data. People get fixated on debates and lawn signs—but those don’t win elections. What matters is how many supporters you’ve identified, and how many of them actually show up to vote.

I’ve spent a lot of time organizing door knockers, making routes, entering data, and teaching people how to use canvassing apps. It’s time-consuming work. A solid door knocker can hit about 30–35 doors an hour. Maybe half get answered. Of those, maybe half will share how they plan to vote. So one hour usually gets you 8–9 pieces of data. And maybe half of those are supporters. You need a lot of hours to find the number of supporters it takes to win.

That’s why volunteers matter so much—especially those willing to actually go out and campaign. The average riding in Canada has about 100,000 electors. Turnout is around 60%, which means you need just over 30,000 votes to win. But with our multi-party system and first-past-the-post voting, many ridings can be won with 22,000–25,000 votes.

So back to the math. If a good door knocker identifies 4–5 supporters per hour, you need 5,000–6,000 hours of volunteer time to identify 25,000 supporters. I’ve never been on a campaign that managed that. It’s practically impossible to hit that number through door knocking alone. But the IDs you get from door knocking are often the best. And in campaigning, like in life, don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Just because you can’t knock every door doesn’t mean you shouldn’t knock as many as you can—and make sure your supporters show up to vote.

That brings me to something that has been noticed this time around that’s very different from the provincial election—people aren’t telling you how they’re voting. You knock, have a decent chat, ask the question, and you get that same vague answer: “I’m still undecided.”

But let’s be honest—most of them aren’t undecided. They just don’t want to say it out loud. And you can usually tell. It’s in the hesitation, the nervous laugh, the way they glance around before mumbling something about “still thinking it over.” You’re not fooling anyone. But here’s the thing—your job isn’t to crack the code. Your job is to move on.

You thank them, mark them undecided, and keep moving. Because that’s what wins campaigns. Not trying to decode everyone’s political trauma. Just showing up, logging the data, and doing it again the next day. That’s how we win. Not with speeches. With shoes on the pavement.