People’s Action’s 17,000+ Canvassers Persuade 200,000 Voters in Battleground States
Contact: Johanna Kichton, press@peoplesaction.org, 202.660.0605
WASHINGTON, D.C.—People’s Action yesterday hosted a last Deep Canvass Town Hall to defeat Trump with U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ill. State Sen. Robert Peters, and musical guest VIC MENSA to host a town hall to defeat Trump. This event kicked-off People’s Action’s final week of action which will culminate in a Deep Canvass Phone-A-Thon, a sprint to election day to call 500,000 voters living in key battleground states between Saturday, Oct. 31 and Tuesday, Nov. 3.
“Over the last number of years what we have seen is an enormous growth in grassroots activism all over this country,” U.S. Senator Sanders said. “We know at the end of the day what is effective is grassroots organizing, is deep canvassing. It is communicating with working class people about our common humanity. We are the future. Our movement is the future. And we are growing stronger every day.”
“One of the things that we know about deep canvassing is that it is intensely more effective than your traditional door-to-door…type of canvassing. The reason that deep canvassing is so effective is that, yes it may be a little bit slower but it’s because we are taking the time to make human connection, ensuring meaningful experiences with other people. Once we are able to make that kind of real human connection, it becomes very, very difficult to undo that experience,” U.S. Rep. Ocasio-Cortez said.
“As a former organizer from a member organization in People’s Action, I’m proud to organize together with Senator Berine Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to end Donald Trump’s criminal abuse of the Office of the President. Trump’s policies have made us sick, taken away our healthcare, our safety, and threatens our future. Together, we will fight back and build a better world,” Illinois State Sen. Peters said.
“We need to meet this moment head on and do everything we can to defeat Trump. For People’s Action, that means signing up record numbers of people to deep canvass and heal America,” People’s Action Director George Goehl said. “And no matter what happens on November 3rd, the following day we’ll be back in the streets, fighting for the multiracial working class and a government that cares for us.”
This week’s events cap an election season of exponential growth for People’s Action, during which the organization:
- Activated more than 17,000 volunteers;
- Made 35.5 million attempts to contact voters in battleground states. Of that total, more than 6.8 million were phone calls and 28.7 million were texts;
- Had a whopping 200,000 deep canvass conversations with conflicted voters;
- Moved 48% of the people towards Biden and completely switched 21% to Biden from voting for Trump or being undecided.
Deep canvass phone calls are candid conversations between canvassers and voters in which participants reflect on the experiences that shape what’s at stake for them. These conversations are critical to not only defeating Trump but also to building bridges among a divided America. People’s Action recently released new results from a deep canvass experiment it conducted showing that the method is about 102 times more effective at moving individual voters than the typical presidential persuasion program.
Watch the town hall here.
About People’s Action
People’s Action is a national network of 37 state and local grassroots, power-building organizations united in fighting for justice. We operate the largest progressive rural organizing project in the country. Our new podcast, To See Each Other, complicates the narrative about rural Americans in our most misunderstood, and often abandoned, communities. The Nation called our Iowa presidential forum the “most in-depth, people-powered forum” of the 2020 cycle.
###