Field Campaigns

Gathering Information At The Door

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Canvassing or “getting out on the doorstep” is the main opportunity to gather information about prospective voters for candidates seeking elections. It is a hard job, one that isn’t always greeted with pleasantries when you are knocking on someone's door at dinner time but it is key to success for a lot of campaigns.

In the Data Management section of The Campaign Blueprint, we will aim to supply you with all the key figures that will aid you on the campaign trail this election season.

When conducting a field campaign here are the key points that you will need to zone in on.

Party Supporters

Asking a person if they are a party supporter is crucial information and one answer that most people have no problem sharing with you. If you are in the United States many homes may have lawn signs declaring party allegiance which will make your job easier otherwise, it should be your first question at the door.

Luckily one of the greatest advantages of using Ecanvasser is the available versatility of use, beyond its primary use as a canvassing app. You may want to consider adding a Custom Field titled, Party Supporter.

Party Allegiance

Assessing how strong or weak this party allegiance is should be your next question. You can do this by asking something as simple as rate on a scale of 1 to 5, 1 being totally loyal to the party and 5 being not very loyal.

Is Transport An Issue?

Another key point you should consider when conducting field canvassing is ensuring your voters can make it to the polls. It could be something as simple as organsing a car to pick up the elderly in the area or going bigger and doing a bus for people. Reciord this informtaion and discuss it back at HQ.

Likelihood To Vote

Knowing someone's voting history shows a lot about what they think of the democratic system. Using your vote is extremely important and the more you are aware of that, the more you value your vote.

Of course there is a means to verify who has actually voted in the past. When a voter asks for a ballot paper at the polling station the polling clerk scores their name off a copy of the electoral register. This is so that no-one can vote more than once. This register, known as the ‘Marked Register’ is kept by the Electoral registration office of your local authority and if approached after the election will supply a copy to you. Some authorities charge for this, some don’t. Some charge a significant fee, some only charge photocopying costs.

Volunteer likelihood?

With Ecanvasser, you have your Team Members on your Campaign, and you can mark people in your People Database as Volunteers. However, you may want to make note of people who are with you, but aren’t quite Volunteering just yet.

As such, it could be useful to create a Custom Field titled "Supporter", with a True/False answer. This will allow you to identify your Supporter segment for any reason, at any time. So if you need to increase your canvassers or event organisers, you can pull from this pool of people.

Structuring Data Effectively

Understanding Your Field Data

There is no point organising a fantastic field data campaign and then not being able to read the data because it is virtually unreadable.

When designing a data gathering plan, you will want to consider the following :

Answer Type:
You will want to refrain from using the Text option as a potential answer - while this answering format has it's own strengths, freely written answers prove hard to analyze, segment, or cross-reference. As such, choose one of the other styles of answers.

Number of Possible Answers:
While greater specificity in your data may seem useful; this is not always the case. If you allow too broad a scope for answers in a multiple choice context, this may result in sprawling data, that you later have to condense into smaller bundles.

Multiple Allowable Answers:
If you select Multiple Choice as the answer style, you can allow users to select multiple options regarding a field. This can be quite useful; however it may also result in sprawling data, as mentioned above.

Purpose:
The potential application of data is also an important part of you how record it. You could have a mass amount of data available to you, but be unable to use it the manner you require due to the format in which it is saved.

Issue Management

If you succeed in categorising your data into easily read segments, this will also come in handy when it comes to prioritising issues.

Using hashtags will help to group together all your issues ranging from #Antisocial behavior to something such as #Community Development.

Maintaining Security For Voters Data

The voter must feel comfortable sharing this information with the canvasser and with Ecanvasser's various permissions levels they will know that their data can't be shared or viewed by just anybody.

There are 5 different permission levels that a Team member on a Campaign can hold. The person who sets up a Campaign is, by default, the Campaign Owner and then there are 4 options for subsequent team members.

• Campaign Owner: Has access to all aspects of Campaign.
• Campaign Manager: Access to all features of the Dashboard except billing and cancelling the campaign.
• Campaign Staffer: All rights to dashboard, except creating Groups and Teams.
• Lead Canvasser: Access to the mobile app and can read reports of houses that have previously been canvassed.
• Canvasser: Access to the mobile app but is unable to view the canvass history of a house.

If you like to learn more about how Ecanvasser can help you or if you want to get your campaign health checked, why not click through below.

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