Political canvassing

Election Day Field Operations: Hour by Hour

Election Day is the one shift in a campaign that cannot be repeated. On any other day, a short volunteer turnout, a missing packet or a lost canvasser can be made up later in the week. On Election Day, it cannot. For that reason, much of what makes a good Election Day field operation is decided in the weeks before: the final list of voters to contact, the turf, the staging locations and who is allowed to make decisions on the day.

This guide follows a field program through the day in order: the night before, the hours before polls open, the morning, the midday check, the afternoon, the final hours and the days after. Times are described in relation to your polls rather than as clock times, because poll hours are set by each state. Confirm yours with your state or county election authority.

For the full field program that leads up to this day, see our guide to running a campaign field program.

The night before

Finish the turf and the walk lists before anyone goes to bed. If you print packets, print them and stack them by staging location. Charge every phone. Settle the final list of voters you will contact, often called the universe. If the universe is still changing late the night before, the morning will start late.

Two more tasks are easy to skip. First, confirm each volunteer's shift one last time. A phone call is harder to overlook than a message, and people have more competing obligations on Election Day than on most days. Second, visit each staging location, or call whoever holds the keys. A locked building at dawn, with volunteers waiting in the parking lot, can cost the first hour of the day.

Before the polls open

Open the staging location before the first shift arrives, not at the same time. The first hour is logistics: turf assignments laid out, a working table, coffee, and one person at the door who knows the plan.

This is also the last chance to update the list. Voters who have already voted early or returned a mail ballot should come off the universe. Knocking on their doors uses time you need for others, and it can annoy a supporter who has already done what you asked. Whether that information is available during early voting, and how often it is updated, depends on your state. Ask your election authority well before Election Day what is published and when.

The morning wave

The morning wave is short and specific. Its purpose is to reach supporters who vote when they are reminded, before their day fills up. The conversation is about logistics rather than persuasion: are you voting today, do you know where your polling place is, and do you need a ride, if your campaign is offering rides. Our post on get-out-the-vote ground game strategies covers how to build the supporter list these shifts work from.

Fewer people are home on a weekday morning than in the evening, so a morning shift usually reaches fewer people per hour. Some field directors respond by cutting the morning wave. Think carefully before you do. A supporter you reach at eight in the morning still has the whole day to vote, while a supporter you reach late in the evening may not.

If you have to choose, send your most experienced canvassers in the morning. The conversations are shorter, and the turf takes more judgment.

Some campaigns also send an Election Day reminder by text to supporters who agreed to receive texts from the campaign. CampaignCNX+ is a separate texting product that can schedule those reminders. Text only people who have agreed to receive your texts.

Midday: check the turf and move people

By late morning, you can see which turf is on pace and which is behind. Midday is the time to move people, because later in the afternoon there is not enough time left for the travel to pay off.

Answer three questions quickly:

• Which turf is furthest behind? Compare each turf with how much of it needs to be finished by the close of polls, not simply with how many doors it has had.
• Has a canvasser stopped recording? Someone with no door results for two hours may be lost, stuck in a building, having a hard day or gone home. Each of those needs a phone call.
• Is anyone knocking without recording results? Doors without results give you nothing to use for the rest of the day.

You can only answer these questions if results arrive during the day. A program that collects paper sheets at the end of each shift learns about a stalled precinct in the evening, when it is too late to act.

Watching the day in Beacon

Draw and assign turf in Beacon before Election Day, so each canvasser starts with a walk list ordered by distance. During the day, as canvassers record door results, check each turf's completion percentage to see which turf is behind, and the leaderboard to see who is recording. If a turf falls behind, reassign it to a canvasser who has finished their own. On every plan, a canvasser's phone shows a warning if they walk outside their assigned turf. On the Growth plan and up, live GPS shows where each canvasser is, which helps a field lead find someone who has stopped. If a canvasser loses signal partway through a shift, their results are queued and sent when signal returns. Our page on live coverage tracking through Election Day shows these views.

The afternoon

The afternoon wave is usually the largest. The goal is steady coverage. Many of the day's doors are knocked in these hours, and this is when you find out whether the plan written weeks earlier is holding.

Decide one thing in advance: what happens when a canvasser finishes a turf. A canvasser who finishes in mid-afternoon and drives back to headquarters for more can lose most of an hour. Either hand out a second turf at launch, or name one person who can assign the next turf by phone.

The final hours

The last two hours before polls close are the last chance to reach supporters who have not voted. They are also the hours when discipline is most likely to slip.

Narrow the list sharply. At this point, the goal is a short list of supporters who have not voted, who are likely to be home, and who can still get to a polling place before it closes. Time spent on a door outside that list is time taken from the doors on it. Our post on the end-of-campaign canvassing sprint covers how to narrow the list in the final week as well.

Narrow the conversation, too: when the polls close, where the voter's polling place is, and whether they can go now. If your campaign offers rides, offer one plainly, because a ride may be the only thing in the way.

Hold to two firm rules. No one knocks after the polls close. And no one goes home with results that have not been recorded. Enter the last results before anyone celebrates or leaves, because the records are what the campaign keeps after tonight.

Rules on campaigning near polling places come from election law, not from a town's canvassing rules. Before Election Day, ask your state or county election authority what applies where you work, and make sure any canvasser working near a polling place knows it.

Decide these before Election Day

If any of these are still open on the morning of Election Day, the day will be spent improvising:

• The universe, final and cut into turf, including how voters who have already voted come off it.
• Staging locations and who opens them, with keys.
• Who may move canvassers. Name one person for each area. Moves decided by a group take too long.
• What happens when a canvasser stops recording: who calls, after how long, and what they say.
• The weather plan, decided in advance.
• What counts as done: coverage of the priority list, not the total number of doors knocked.

If you are short of people, cut in this order

Campaigns often start Election Day with fewer people than the plan assumed. Deciding what to drop early in the morning, tired, is how good turf is abandoned by accident. Set the order in advance.

1. Protect the final hours first. Those doors cannot be knocked later.
2. Protect your highest-priority precincts second, even if it means leaving a lower-priority precinct entirely. A list that is half covered everywhere leaves gaps in the places that matter most.
3. Cut the morning wave third. Cut the number of turfs before you cut how thoroughly each one is covered.
4. Never cut recording. A shift that knocked doors but recorded nothing leaves you without the information you need for every later decision that day.

After Election Day

Do two things in the following days, while people still remember the details.

First, compare your coverage with the precinct results. If your turf followed precinct lines, this comparison is the clearest feedback a field program receives, even when it is uncomfortable to read. An export of your door results makes the comparison easier to set up.

Second, thank the people who knocked, by name, and keep the list. The people who showed up and knocked doors on Election Day are among the most valuable volunteers you will have for the next race, and that list is easy to lose once a campaign winds down.

Summary

A well-run Election Day is fairly quiet for the field director, because the important decisions were made weeks earlier. The day itself is steady coverage, one check at midday to move people where they are needed, and a disciplined final push on a short list. If you find yourself setting strategy in the middle of the afternoon, the plan was not finished.

To have your turf, walk lists and completion views ready well before your own Election Day, start a 14-day trial of Beacon. The trial includes the Starter plan's features.