I spent a recent Sunday in Croydon, Pennsylvania, a working-class town along Neshaminy Creek in the southeastern corner of the state, learning and practicing deep canvassing, a promising method for persuading voters to change their minds about politics.
I was there as a volunteer with Changing the Conversation Together (CTC), an independent group that first experimented with deep canvassing in 2018, training several hundred volunteers who fanned out across Staten Island and helped tip that usually Republican House seat into the hands of Democrat Max Rose.
As several studies have shown, deep canvassing, which involves deliberately developing a nonjudgmental, empathetic connection with a voter through 10 to 15 minutes of authentic conversation, can - if done properly - lead to persistent changes in people’s attitudes on issues like immigration and transgender rights. A new peer-reviewed study by academics David Broockman and Josh Kalla, soon to be published in American Political Science Review, replicates those findings and suggests that it is precisely by focusing on having a nonjudgmental attitude and working to make a real connection that canvassers can effectively move the people they talk to.
