“Why Does Canvassing Work?”
canvasser represents but invite the canvasser in for dinner? Why do people trust
canvassers they meet on the street with serious amounts of financial information when
they know they could support the organization on the internet? Why do people give
canvassers—total strangers—rides in the rain? Why don't the people who choose to
support canvassers “free ride” like everybody else? And why do canvassers agree to do
all this, either as volunteers or as workers who could make the same money in a
supermarket or at a coffee shop with a lot less stress? Why does it all work and what
does it have to do with democracy?
Though there are certainly differences between electoral and fundraising
canvasses, I believe the two are worth considering in juxtaposition. The most important
reason is perhaps the fact that explanations of why people contribute run into the same
fundamental paradox that explanations of voting do: the irrationality of assuming any
given person’s efforts are going to make a difference. This paradox dates to Anthony
Down’s classic formulation of the rational self-interested voter, who will vote if pB > C,
that is, if the potential benefits from seeing the outcome go one way, B, multiplied by the
odds any given individual of influencing the election p is greater than C, the cost of
voting, which involve transportation costs, the opportunity cost of any foregone work and
most significantly, the time it takes to inform oneself about the upcoming elections and
physically go to the polls to vote. Given that time is for most people scarce and p is
extremely low in all but the smallest of town elections, it follows that voting is strictly
speaking irrational and the optimum strategy is to remain “rationally ignorant” about
politics (1957). One can make a very similar claim about donating to charity or to
political causes. To return the above example, what are the odds that any given one of
Research Agenda
Mohanty 2
Convention