Whether a voter canvassing operation conducted during a pandemic will significantly affect final vote tallies is a subject of intense debate — particularly among Democrats, where party operatives say they are under pressure to win every vote possible in an election they consider the most important of their lifetimes.
In some cases, progressive leaders even say they still have plans to launch a door-to-door voter contact effort in several key battleground states where the number of COVID-19 cases has abated in recent weeks.
But over the summer, a time when canvassing operations traditionally begin in earnest to build relationships with targeted voters, national Democratic-aligned groups almost universally halted doing so.
That includes Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, Democratic House and Senate campaigns, and ideological allies like the union AFSCME or liberal grassroots groups like Indivisible. One outside group, the Progressive Turnout Project, attempted to start its canvassing campaign in June, before bowing to internal pressure that the process put employees and voters alike in danger.
Many progressive leaders struggled to name any major national organizations on the left engaged in canvassing and said that, by and large, their supporters understood that doing so was a bad idea at this time.
