My fiancé just got a call. It went something like this.
————
Biden campaign: hi I was wondering if we can count on your vote for Biden this election?
Fiancé: honestly I’m really not sure. I’m having a really hard time deciding who I am going to vote for. I might vote third party.
Biden campaign: well have a great night!
Fiancé: umm...you too?
————
Seriously Lol anybody that has done phone canvassing knows this is the EXACT type of answer you want to hear to follow up on and have a conversation with the person to try to convince them.
Sad.
Counterpoint: they’re probably paid per call. This is exactly what you do if you’re paid to work for someone like Biden: the bare minimum.
Or they feel like they're far enough ahead in the polls, so they are just looking for people committed to voting for Biden. They will call them again on election day and remind them to go vote.
Their FL textbankers texted me and I wrote back pretty much the same thing, basically "I'm voting, I'm undecided, I can't commit to voting for joe if he doesn't support police reforms, more aggressive climate policy like the GND, and universal healthcare" which was always a slam dunk sort of responses get as a bernie texter . They pretty much just told me "understandable have a nice day" and that's for like, the swingest of swing states lol
Blows my mind that shit like this happens in the US, not once in my pitiful 27 year existence in then shiity white north has anyone from any party called me to tell me to vote. We just get a month of shitty ads and signs everywhere then another neoliberal takes charge.
Huh, I've gotten lots of texts like this in the last few Canadian elections, provincial and federal. I know my parents would get phone calls probably because they have a landline, but I haven't heard of them just calling up people's cellphones just yet.
They asked me if I was going to vote for Joe Biden. I said "well I guess I have to."
They sighed out loud.
They asked if I received mail in ballot yet, I said I did.
They asked if I had sent it in yet.
I said I hadn't yet.
They just said okay, goodbye.
That was it. They didn't even tell me the fucking deadline, I literally had a ballot ready to go, said I was going to vote for their prick, and they just said ok bye.
THEY DONT WANT IT
Phone canvassing is hard though. Back in February I couldn't do more than half an hour before I collapsed from anxiety and spent the rest of the day in bed.
I used to live in rural PA, I moved to NYC a few years ago but my name is still on a lot of caller lists apparently.
I just received a call yesterday from Pennsylvania Democrats asking “What of Joe Biden’s policies excite you the most?” And I said “none of them, I’m voting for the Green Party”
This was followed by about ten seconds of painful silence then an “are you
sure?” I’m assuming he meant to say sure but kind of cut himself off and then we had another 5 seconds of silence before the guy on the other end of the line finally said “ok goodbye” and hung up lolIt's not surprising. Their volunteers are literally taught to avoid talking policies. There's not a lot of room left to convince people when policy is removed from the table.
How is the canvasser going to give a reason to vote for Biden when Biden can't give one?
when i did canvassing for bernie we were advised against arguing with people. seems like standard fair. you're basically supposed to ask if they're voting for the candidate you're canvassing for and if so remind them of where their polling location is and the date, otherwise you leave them uninformed and hopefully un-reminded to vote.
the truth is that arguing that someone who is undecided should vote for someone based on a phone call is actually more likely to drive that person to either not vote at all or vote for the opposition.
Well I was advised against arguing with people as well, but when someone was undecided, I was explicitly told to convince them. In my experience, I could often convince people by asking what there priorities are, then finding our common ground. But idk what your experience canvassing had been
Yeah, that matches my experience. I canvassed in person and we got several people to go from undecided to bernie after talking about the issues. Just not worth wasting the effort on people that are entrenched.
It’s not about arguing though. It’s about convincing people to vote for your candidate. She may have been genuinely open to being convinced to vote for Biden and the guy didn’t even try.
Yeah yeah electoralism etc etc, but if you’re literally spending your time calling strangers to talk to them about the election and you’re not willing to have a simple conversation about it then you’re basically just a pollster and why bother in the first place
no, i'm pointing out that your wife specifically is probably not very likely to being open to being convinced to vote for biden.
She legit doesn’t know who to vote for. She was like a prime candidate for this exact sort of call.
but this guy on the phone is more effective than you are at convincing her of who to vote for?
I’m not going to tell my wife who to vote for. I’m not even a yankee. I vote NDP, it’s a totally different ball game up here.
(Edit: Canada)
In the time it takes to convince a genuine third party voter to vote you could probably speak to a few more left leaning voters who might need to be reminded to check their registration or whatnot
I've done this kind of canvassing. They're calling inconsistent, left-leaning voters. They're just trying to get you to the poles. If you're squirmy, they're just going to move on to the next easy one.
They have zero drive at this kind of thing, i wonder if it's because they know joe's a weak candidate. I don't know if they're doing it out of a misplaced sense of duty, or what.
