Political canvassing

How to Run a Listening Canvass Between Elections

A listening canvass is a round of door-to-door visits whose purpose is to ask residents what matters to them and to record what they say. Canvassers do not ask for a vote, a signature or a commitment. To run one, decide in advance what you will do with what you hear, choose where to listen, write two to four open questions, train volunteers to listen more than they talk, record a result at every door, sort the answers into themes, and report back to the neighborhood.

The months between elections suit this kind of canvass. With no election close, volunteers can take their time at each door, and new precinct or block leads have a reason to meet their neighbors before the next campaign begins. A listening canvass works for a local party organization of any affiliation, a nonpartisan civic group, a neighborhood association or a group preparing for a future ballot question. For the wider picture of field programs, see our political canvassing guide.

How a listening canvass differs from other canvasses

Most canvassing has a specific request at its center. A listening canvass does not, and that changes how it is planned.

• A persuasion canvass tries to move a resident's opinion on a candidate or an issue.
• A supporter identification canvass asks whether the resident supports a candidate or position, so the campaign can contact supporters again before the election.
• A get-out-the-vote canvass reminds known supporters to vote in the final days.
• Deep canvassing uses longer conversations, built around the resident's own experiences, to explore and sometimes change a view on an issue. Our guide to deep canvassing explains the method and the research behind it.
• A listening canvass asks open questions, records the answers and invites residents to stay in touch if they want to. It makes no other request.

Be clear at the door about who you are. A listening canvass run by a party organization should say so plainly, and should not present itself as a neutral survey. Residents can then decide for themselves how to answer.

Step 1: Decide what you will do with what you hear

Before you write a single question, decide how the answers will be used. A few common choices:

• Report back to the neighborhood at a public meeting or in a short written summary.
• Set the organization's priorities for the coming year.
• Bring the concerns you heard to local officials, with residents' names left out unless they asked to be named.

Commit to at least one report back, with a date, before the first shift. Residents who take the time to share their concerns will reasonably expect to hear what came of them.

Step 2: Choose where to listen

Start small and choose areas on purpose:

• Precincts or neighborhoods your organization knows least, where you have few contacts or old records.
• Areas with many new residents, such as new housing developments.
• Precincts with a new lead, so the lead meets neighbors in a low-pressure setting.

Example (planning assumption): two or three precincts, six volunteers working in pairs, and four Saturday shifts of two to three hours each. Adjust the size to the number of volunteers you have and the number of answers you can read and sort afterward.

Step 3: Write two to four open questions

Open questions invite residents to answer in their own words. Keep the list short, so that each conversation can stay unhurried.

Example questions:

• "What is one thing you would change about this neighborhood?"
• "What do you wish the city, village or school district paid more attention to?"
• "Is there anything about local government that is hard to find out?"

You may add one question that can be counted, such as "On a scale of 1 to 5, how well are the streets on this block maintained?" Then add a closing question about staying in touch: "Would you like to hear what we learned, or about local meetings and volunteer days?"

Avoid three kinds of question:

• Leading questions, which suggest the answer, such as "Don't you agree that taxes are too high?"
• Questions about how the resident votes or which party they support. They turn a listening visit into a different kind of canvass.
• Questions you cannot act on. If the organization will do nothing with an answer, leave the question out.

Step 4: Write a short script

Canvassers should know the script well enough to say it in their own words. An example opening:

Hi, I'm [Name], a volunteer with [Organization]. We're not asking for anything today. We're asking neighbors on [Street] what matters to them. Do you have two minutes?

An example close:

Thank you. We're sharing what we hear at a neighborhood meeting on [date]. Would you like to know when and where it is?

If the resident says no to either question, thank them and move on. Record the result before walking to the next door.

Step 5: Train volunteers to listen

A short training session before the first shift is enough. Cover these points:

• Listen more than you talk. Ask the question, then wait. A follow-up such as "Can you tell me more about that?" gives the resident room to explain.
• Do not argue or correct. The visit is for hearing the resident's view, not for debating it.
• Write down the resident's words, briefly, rather than your own summary of them.
• Do not promise what the organization cannot deliver. Promise only the report back you planned in Step 1.
• Answer questions about the organization honestly and briefly, then return to listening.
• Respect "No Soliciting" signs and anyone who asks not to be visited again, and record the request so no one knocks there again.
• Work in pairs, in daylight where possible, and leave any door where you feel unsafe.

Check local rules before the first shift. Some towns set rules on soliciting or hours, and our post on whether door-to-door canvassing is legal explains what to look for and whom to ask.

Step 6: Record every door

Record a result at every door, including the doors where no one answered. A door with no result looks the same as a door no one visited, and someone may knock on it again for no reason. Record answers the same way at every door, so they can be sorted later, and agree before the first shift on a few set words for common themes, such as "traffic," "parks" or "schools."

Step 7: Sort what you heard

After each shift, read the notes while the conversations are fresh.

1. Tag each answer with one or more themes. Use the set words from Step 6 and add new ones as they come up.
2. Count how often each theme appears. Example (illustrative numbers): of 140 conversations, 38 mentioned traffic on one road, 25 mentioned the condition of a park and 19 mentioned school crowding.
3. Note differences between areas. A concern that appears in one precinct and nowhere else is worth knowing.
4. Keep a few quotes without names, to show in the report back what residents actually said.

Step 8: Report back

Keep the promise you made at the door. Share what you heard, with names left out, in one or more of these ways:

• A neighborhood meeting, where residents can add to what you heard.
• A one-page summary, posted online or left at the doors you visited.
• A message to residents who asked to stay in touch, using only the contact method they agreed to.

Say what the organization plans to do next, even if it is a small step, and invite the residents who offered to help. Our guide to rebuilding precinct coverage after an election explains how a listening canvass fits into recruiting precinct and block leads.

Running a listening canvass in Beacon

Beacon is a door-to-door canvassing app that canvassers open on their phones.

• Choose your organization type at sign-up. A party organization chooses Political campaign and sees Canvassers, Voters, Territories and Walk List. A community group can choose Nonprofit or Other, which uses Volunteers, Contacts, Regions and Outreach List.
• Create a campaign for the listening round. One organization can hold several campaigns, so the listening canvass can sit alongside your earlier campaigns and their door results. Put your opening, your questions and your close in the Script field, or choose a saved script with Load from Script Library. Canvassers see the script on the door screen.
• Record the answers. You can attach a short survey to a new campaign. It opens when the canvasser records that they spoke with someone, and managers export the answers from the campaign page with Export Survey Responses. You can also use the 1 to 5 rating for a counted question and the Notes field for residents' own words and requests such as "do not visit again."
• Record every door. The eight door results are contacted, not home, refused, moved, deceased, inaccessible, come back later and left literature.
• Assign the areas. Draw each precinct or neighborhood as a territory, assign it to a pair of volunteers, and reassign it if someone cancels. Walk lists download with the stops ordered by distance.
• Follow progress. The turf completion percentage, heat views of results and the leaderboard show which areas have been covered.
• Sort the answers afterward. CSV and PDF exports of contacts, door results and survey answers give you a file to tag and count.
• Bring in every volunteer. Every plan includes unlimited canvassers. If a canvasser loses signal partway through a shift, their results are queued and sent when the signal returns.

Add your contacts to Beacon before the first shift. When you deliver the report back door to door, a Literature Drop campaign and the "left literature" result record which doors received it. Never leave printed material in or on a mailbox. More on how Beacon supports neighborhood and community work is on our community organizing page.

If residents ask to hear from you by text, use a texting service such as CampaignCNX+, a separate product from Beacon. Text only people who signed a sheet that says plainly they agree to receive texts, with the date recorded. A good conversation at the door is not agreement to receive texts.

A short checklist

• A decision on how the answers will be used, and a date for the report back.
• Two or three areas chosen on purpose.
• Two to four open questions, plus one question about staying in touch.
• A short script, and volunteers trained to listen rather than persuade.
• A result recorded at every door, including not-home doors and do-not-visit requests.
• Answers tagged by theme and counted after each shift.
• A report back delivered as promised.

Plan your listening round

Pick two precincts, write your questions and send your first pairs out this winter. Start a 14-day trial of Beacon on the Starter plan's features, with no card needed, and set up your listening campaign before the first shift.