Having trained thousands over the years in the fun and accomplishments in knocking on doors for your local politician, I still know a bit about the art of identifying your vote. And that is what you are doing at all those doors on which you bruise your knuckles. You are finding out how the inhabitants of that household intend to vote.
I remember comparing notes with former Ontario premier David Peterson’s father on the subject. In a Toronto area by-election one time, he was getting the canvassers to come back to the committee rooms to be debriefed by C.-M. Peterson personally. That gentleman really understood what door-knocking was all about.
My first lesson in real door-knocking was when coming up against the NDP’s David Lewis family. I was something of an observer in that campaign. Former evangelist and then a newspaper executive, Charles Templeton was running for a by-election seat in the Ontario legislature. Despite having some of the most experienced liberals working on his campaign, Chuck got his head served to him on a platter. The NDP clobbered us.
And that was the last time where the NDP did that to a candidate of mine. The key was that your canvassers had to take ownership of their polls. Either alone or as a team, the canvassers had to know the voters in the poll and how they intended to vote. On election day or sooner, the canvassers had to make sure that the people supporting their party got to the polls and voted.
If someone, as reported by Susan Delacourt of the Toronto Star, said they can access this new smart phone app and find out that one per cent of the households asked liberal canvassers about SNC-Lavalin, I would pay heightened attention to that concern. I would want to know if the person indicated a voting intention, the demographics of the household and the approximate age of the person being interviewed.
It is something like the question I would ask if the householder told the canvasser to get the hell off their porch. Was this request made before or after the canvasser identified with a particular political party?
-30-
Copyright 2019 © Peter Lowry
Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]