She seemed to be connecting Jacksons experience to that of her gay friends. We have a national reputation for our success developing practical, positive, non-partisan, non-judgmental ways to connect with voters. Fanned out across the neighborhood were more than three dozen Leadership Lab volunteers, many of them local college students, as well as progressive activists from around the country hoping to learn about changing voters minds. We trained our volunteers to connect with voters at the door on a personal and values level, not to talk at them with scripted talking points. They still felt more positively about transgender people than those who had gotten the unrelated canvass. And he can grow a better beard than I can!. But there is a similarity, because at the root theres the feeling of being judged, of having someone make assumptions about you, and that does not feel good.. It does seem as though the two-way nature of the conversations is essential for the canvassing technique to work. If they met a voter who wanted to get rid of the law, they wouldnt call them out for prejudice. He also admitted to lying about having received funds for his study from several organizations, including the Ford Foundation. To run a canvass you need staff, office space, voter lists, technology and more. He vowed to keep at it, but soon there was no need. Most notably, Ella led the LABs collaboration with SAVE, Miami-Dades leading LGBT group, to develop and measure a deep canvass model that could reduce transphobia. She smiled shyly and asked Fleischer, the Leadership Labs director, how she could help him. Our team is made up ofamazing creative, organizational, and political consulting talent committed to achieving political and advocacy goals. At Vox, we believe that everyone deserves access to information that helps them understand and shape the world they live in. "Canvassers asked people to talk about a time they were treated differently. Broockman and Kalla published the results in Science on Thursday. The canvassers thought the conversations were changing people's minds, but Fleischer says he couldn't know if it was working without independent verification. In the face of this defeat, the Leadership LAB was established at the LA LGBT Center to embark on a radical project - knocking on voters' doors to learn why and make a case for love. The mans daughter, though, would have none of it: She practically pushed him out of the way to tell Riley they were a 10. Then volunteers from SAVE, an LGBT advocacy organization based in Florida, visited half of the 501 people who responded and canvassed them about an unrelated topic, recycling. The lessons from deep canvassing are that when youre trying to talk to people that may disagree with you and change minds, you have to work as a team. Dave Fleischer, director of the Leadership Lab. In 2018, Kalla and Broockman published a meta-analysis of 49 experiments that were designed to test whether voters are persuadable by conventional means: phone calls, television ads, traditional canvassing, and so on. (You can read the full deep canvassing script here on page 47.). Still, the Leadership Lab is unusual in its focus on quality over quantity. It could take awhile. But instead he began with a simple question: If she were to vote on whether to include gay and transgender people in nondiscrimination laws, would she be in favor or opposed? Approaching voters with emotional honesty and vulnerability. The distinguishing feature of a deep canvass is you take a lot more time to talk to voters and have a bona fide two-way conversation about real experiences that shape their thinking about the issues. People would often be very judgmental of the woman on the video or any woman who had had an abortion, Fleischer said. The year before, a survey of more than 6,000 transgender and gender-nonconforming people revealed that an astonishing 41 percent had tried to commit suicide. This is the You Are Not So Smart Podcast. One such activist is Vivian Topping, who decided, along with other LGBTQ activists and allies, to try deep canvassing in Massachusetts in 2018, when transgender rights were on the ballot. The technique might be used to target any societal prejudice or be used to increase prejudice, Broockman acknowledges. Not every campaign can afford to run canvasses. And its this meta-perception, Bruneau finds, that then fuels ongoing conflict and dehumanization. Through a deep canvass, we can at times identify a voters deeply bias and prejudices, views that may not be identified through polling or focus groups but can be utilized by your opposition. Volunteers may also canvass as part of an issue-specific advocacy campaign. Without that theoretical understanding, its difficult to generalize and use the approach in other settings, Bruneau says. It likely wasnt because someone berated you. "There's something special about caring about why [people] feel the way they do. President Trump called it an invasion, apparently hoping that by raising xenophobic, dehumanizing fears about nonwhite immigrants, as he had in 2016, hed help his party win seats in Congress. It is an extraordinarly rewarding experience, and you will come away with greater skill at talking with, understanding, and influencing a wide range of voters who are not just like you. Canvassers often had to politely extricate themselves after 20 minutes voters were sad to see them go. That is, it will be a platform that individuals, groups, and campaigns alike can plug into to receive training and support for progressive volunteers who wish to canvass in their communities. Share this page on LinkedIn, 7 Questions with Dave Fleischer on Deep Canvassing, Remote Work Culture: How to Boost Your Company Culture. When we see racist behavior, we should call it racist and not be euphemistic by calling it racially charged. Arguably, theres a time and place for calling people out, particularly when it comes to powerful, influential people. Those basic numbers tell you something about just how willing most Americans are to have an open conversation with a stranger about these ostensibly divisive issues, Broockman says. Deep canvassing is a long-term investment, but the impact is cumulative. It will take more studies and replications of this study before scientists know exactly what is influencing people's opinions. The study got a huge amount of attention. In one, a social worker (a social worker! Barrett marveled) announced that being transgender is a mental illness; in another, a man matter-of-factly said he hoped to develop a straight pill to change gay people. Broockman and Kalla found that the treatment group was considerably more accepting of transgender people and that a single, approximately 10-minute conversation with a stranger can markedly reduce prejudice for at least three months. Unlike LaCours invented finding that the messenger matters more than the message, Broockman and Kalla found that both transgender and nontransgender canvassers were effective. Learn from Netroots Nation about research from the field of deep canvassing and receive training on how to apply this grassroots learning to your own power-building and persuasion work. Though the abortion debate is less obviously rooted in prejudice than transgender discrimination, Fleischer and his canvassers noticed that many voters reacted negatively to a short video of a middle-aged woman recounting having an abortion when she was 22. I know it exists, and I hear stories, and I see them on TV. Cost: $50 for both sessions He was only half joking. Leadership LAB Conversation with a Voter about Transgender Rights, 2016(Video 8:30 mins). I'm David McRaney, and this is the final segment about deep canvassing. #KnockEveryDoor serves as a nationwide hub for progressive canvassing training and deployment. At Peoples Action, he helped build and execute a groundbreaking immigration Deep Canvass experiment in the fall of 2019 that targeted rural voters and persuaded them on pro-immigrant perspectives. His previous research suggested that people dont change their mind very easily, and when they are persuaded to think differently, the effect is usually temporary, he told me. An interview with the West Kootenay EcoSociety (Canada) Executive Director who talks about how they came up with a script for climate change they tried over 60 scripts. That is just not what we are trying to do here, he says. Were asking voters not to discriminate, to be less prejudiced, and we need to walk that walk, she said. Kathleen Campisano, Deputy Director of the Leadership LAB, . Its this nonjudgmental exchanging of narratives that Broockman and Kalla think is the key ingredient in how deep canvassing works. That doesn't mean everybody came away feeling more positive about transgender rights. In 2020, these seem like radical propositions. Let's say you want to beat Candidate X who won in Michigan by 10,000 votes. Then they should try to change the voters minds. Fleischers staff at the Los Angeles-based Leadership Lab which goes door to door to reduce bias against L.G.B.T. For me, I never had a transgender friend I was really close to until I was 56, he said, handing Nancy the picture. This kind of conversation helps me talk to family members who arent totally there yet on accepting their identity, Topping says. Her passion for social justice and teambuilding began in the woods of Timber, Oregon, where her family built a large community home around the core value of radical acceptance. But remember, the impact of these conversations can last nine months or more. To me, protecting transgender people with these laws is just affirming that theyre human. Fleischer then steered the conversation to Nancys experiences with discrimination. Were out talking to voters about an important issue Fleischer began, only to have Nancy excuse herself and walk away. He responds by telling his story of being discriminated against for being gay. All three places are experiencing demographic change, with a growing and diversifying population of immigrant residents, says Kim Serrano, the messaging research project manager at the California Immigrant Policy Center. What do social scientists know about reducing prejudice in the world? "We had a certain sense of responsibility.". While a discussion of transgender rights can trigger deeply ingrained feelings about sex and gender roles, the issue is also a fairly recent political consideration for many people. Susmik Lama is a one-and-a-half generation Nepali immigrant to the United States, born and raised in Kathmandu, Nepal, who now calls Philly home. Typically, in a political canvass, an activist might list a bunch of facts or statistics about why the voter should support their cause. Listening to a political opponents concerns. In a deep canvass, we go to the turf where voters have voted against our causes in the past, and we find out why. What we can now say experimentally, the key to the success of these conversations is doing the exact opposite of that.. "So it's about 15 years of progress that we've experienced in 10 minutes at the door," he says. Deep canvassing was not cooked up by experts in . Since 2018, as the cofounder of the New Conversation Initiative and the New Conversation Institute, Steve has been a key partner in the development, rigorous testing, and implementation of deep canvass programs on issues from climate to immigration and policing. And the data shows it works. You dont know if theyre at McDonalds on their iPhone, and you cant always be sure what theyre saying to voters. Ella then managed the Leadership LAB project at the Los Angeles LGBT Center, where a team of more than 1,000 volunteers and staff collaborated to innovate new methods of voter persuasion and prejudice reduction and apply them on the ground to help win LGBT rights campaigns across the country. In this conversation, recorded in March 2016, a Leadership LAB volunteer speaks with a voter in Los Angeles about including transgender people in non-discrimination laws using the same approach that was studied by Broockman and Kalla in Miami in 2015. That lack of control scares campaigns. Typically, the conversations begin with the canvasser asking the voter for their opinion on a topic, like abortion access, immigration, or LGBTQ rights. It also takes time to get a canvass up and running and for volunteers or paid staff to get good at delivering. Prejudices are often deep, obstinate beliefs. Broockman and Kalla point to Leadership Lab canvassers ability to engage voters in two prejudice-reduction behaviors at the door: perspective taking (the ability to empathize with anothers experience) and active processing (deep or effortful thinking). In these, researchers included conditions to see whether the conversations could work if conducted over the phone (they did, but it was slightly less effective). Thats likely a lot of people. The study's conclusions differ from the conclusions of the LaCour's falsified study from 2014 in one crucial way, Broockman says. The watered-down intervention without the two-way exchange didnt move anyone to support undocumented immigrants. Nancy had no such seemingly relevant personal experiences, nor did she appear particularly concerned about bathroom safety. Here is the script used by The Australian Youth Climate Coalition AYCC in the lead up to 2022 Australian election to talk about climate. One of the highest impact and lowest cost strategies for building power in our communities and taking back our democracy is to radically increase the number of conversations between volunteers and voters. hide caption. Whats the best way to convince a voter at the door? I think theyre wonderful. Massachusetts voters could choose to keep or throw out a law that banned discrimination based on gender identity. How Do You Change Voters Minds? Technology has helped a bit with the scale challenge, but theres always the question: Do you knock on as many doors as possible, or do you knock on fewer doors and have potentially more fruitful interactions?, Theres also a lot that can go wrong when fresh-faced canvassers descend on unfamiliar neighborhoods. Whats missing here, she says, is a theoretical understanding for why the change is occurring. Its also a challenge to change a campaigns habits and make the goal of canvassing be to successfully relate to other people. Were literally iterating this model every day with a handful of full-time paid organizers working as peers with hundreds of volunteers to figure out whats working, whats not, and what needs to be added, subtracted or changed from our processes. "Our ability to change voters' hearts and minds has been measured, this time for real," Fleischer said, contrasting the intensely reviewed work of Broockman and Kalla to the earlier, retracted paper. The truth is, theres not much out there in scientific literature on what can change a voters mind. Before the canvass conversations, both groups completed what they believed to be an unrelated online survey with dozens of social and political questions, including some designed to measure transgender prejudice. The Los Angeles LGBT Center's Leadership LAB (Learn Act Build) specializes in deep canvassing and organizing through volunteer leadership development. Feel free to reach out to learn more about how to get involved. We hope to provide both new and seasoned grassroots activists with a quality canvassing training that will allow them to enhance their local power building around whichever issue or candidate of their choice. battlefield: transgender rights. Dave Fleischer, the Project Director at the Los Angeles LGBT Centers Leadership LAB, has big ideas on how campaigns can improve their deep canvassing efforts. There are other potential problems. found to be successful at reducing transgender prejudice. New distinctions Kalla says some people came away from the canvasser feeling very differently and some people not so much at all. There, Executive Director David Fleischer, collaborating with political scientists David Broockman and Josh Kalla and a host of staff and volunteers, have been working for years to iterate a model called deep canvassing.. Its a type of conversation thats closer to what a psychotherapist might have with a patient than a typical political argument. In the new study, Kalla and Broockman put deep canvassing through a more rigorous test. I have to teach my hamster to speak Finnish today., Gardiner turned to the volunteers. Though he has devoted much of his political and community-organizing career to L.G.B.T. It is a landmark study, according to Elizabeth Paluck, a psychologist at Princeton University who was not involved with the work. An excellent introduction to deep canvassing and the work of the Leadership LAB can be found in an April 2016 feature article in the New . David Broockman and Josh Kallas measurement of this projects impact become the landmark study that brought deep canvassing into the national spotlight, proving that it had the power to lastingly reduce prejudice. We studied everything, from the kinds of conversations we should be having to the characteristics that made a voter persuadable, he says. Fleischer then returned to his scale, asking Nancy what number felt right for her now. Their main hypothesis is that it works because its not threatening. Instead of pelting voters with facts, we ask open-ended questions and then we listen, Dave Fleischer, the LGBTQ rights organizer who developed the technique, told me in 2016. Steve Deline has been organizing around the methodology of deep canvassing, across multiple movements, for 13 years. But for transgenders? He has been organizing for over 20 years, with deep experience in community organizing, electoral politics and the immigrants rights movement. Deep canvassing is an approach to conversations which is non-judgemental and invites people to open up about their real conflicted feelings on an issue. Jeffrey Fountain/Courtesy of Los Angeles LGBT Center. Treat it like the most normal thing in the world. (One clinical therapist I showed it to said it sounded a bit like motivational interviewing, a technique used to help clients work through ambivalent feelings.) That means you need to create 100,000 conversations to change 10,000 minds and win the vote. (These methods may make it easier to scale up in a bigger campaign.). In 2012, Steve embedded with the Minnesotans United marriage equality campaign, which mobilized over 14,000 LGBTQ and ally volunteers to have more than 220,000 deep canvass conversations on the phones, contributing to a first-ever ballot box victory that many thought impossible. Staying grounded in our real lived experiences instead of opinions. Deep Canvassing. Keep in mind the media environment the canvassers were working in. This is not just a story of pushing on an open door and taking people who are already Democrats and they just needed a small push, Broockman adds. Since joining Peoples Action, Matthew has been a part of two of the largest deep canvass campaigns ever run. ), Emile Bruneau, a neuroscientist who studies intergroup conflict at the University of Pennsylvania and was not involved in the canvassing experiments, tells me in an email it is so promising to see an intervention, any intervention, that has a lasting effect on big social issues.. The canvassers don't try to build rational arguments for why someone should think one way or another. After the canvass, the study participants answered the same questions about transgender people that they had answered before the study, including how positively or negatively they felt towards transgender people on a scale of 0 to 100. The canvassers also share their own stories: about being an immigrant, about being a member of the LGBTQ community, or about just knowing people who are. Thats not known.). Broockman says that public opinion about gay people has improved by 8.5 points between 1998 and 2012. The first of the three experiments was pretty much a replication of the 2016 study, but on the topic of rights for undocumented immigrants. 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, canif done properlylead to persistent changes in people's attitudes on issues like immigration and transgender rights. We are still in the process of figuring this out. He is deeply passionate about the superpowers of vulnerability and non-judgmental curiosity that we all carry within us, and the political and personal transformations that occur when we use those powers to bridge fear and difference. That failed miserably, he said. A typical canvassing conversation might have ended there. Think of any of our recent elections nobody is winning these things by 10 or 20 points. Another a tattooed student who identifies as gender-nonconforming proudly recalled persuading a voter who clearly had no experience with anyone who identified as being outside the gender binary. Contact Cambridge, MA, USA (617) 702-4787 caleb@owlfoxdean.com. Third, we will help volunteer teams do data entry for volunteers. The Leadership LAB works to reduce prejudice and change voters hearts and minds. A shocked and embarrassed Green requested that Science retract the study; soon after, Princeton rescinded a teaching offer to LaCour. He enlisted a graduate student at UCLA named Michael LaCour to see if there was a measurable effect. Its not about listing facts or calling people out on their prejudicial views. In 2020, Susmik moved to New Hampshire to work as a field organizer for Bernie Sanders presidential campaign. In 2014, Science published a study claiming to show that an approximately 20-minute conversation with a gay or lesbian canvasser trained by Fleischers team could turn a gay-marriage opponent into a supporter. He also helped lead a second Deep Canvass operation in three states in 2021 during the federal immigration debate. Some folks may have a crucifix on the door. "He kept saying high school is hard for everybody. Join us for the following two webinars on Effective Lobbying and Deep Canvassing, both presented by Olivia Chow and the Institute for Change Leaders in partnership with the Sustainability Network. In New Hampshire, Susmik reached out to immigrant and refugee communities in the state, which has a particularly high number of Bhutanese refugees from Nepal. Nancy had mostly dismissed Fleischers how did that make you feel? questions, but his personal story prompted a shift. But Science retracted the study five months later, after the lead author couldnt produce his data and admitted to lying about aspects of the experiments design. Not so with deep canvassing. How Do You Change Voters Minds? This family is a 10!, Several of Rileys conversations proved poignant. Video example of deep canvassing. Were just beginning to learn how to do this well, but its important. Right, because otherwise you have the biggest secret in the world, and everyone thinks something about you thats not true, Fleischer said, before pivoting to a story about Jacksons being demeaned by a waiter in a restaurant. But when it comes to changing minds, they work. Its much easier to put all your volunteers in a cozy phone bank where everyone gets to hang out and eat pizza.. Fleischer headed west to work with the Los Angeles L.G.B.T. A typical state or national campaign, even one with a ground-game focus, doesnt want its volunteers spending 10 or 15 minutes at a door. They, along with Yale statistician Peter Aronow, discovered that LaCour's work was almost a complete fabrication. He and his colleagues started the effort in 2009, shortly after the Prop 8 constitutional amendment and struck down same-sex marriage in California. The curse of the orange hats, read a headline in Salon. It was developed by the Leadership LAB in Los Angeles and has been effectively employed to help motivate voters in multiple organizing projects across the nation. I cant think of a campaign thats put more volunteers on the ground in a primary season to have quality, face-to-face conversations with voters, she told me. Fleischer asked her to rate that support on a scale from zero to 10.