Knock, knock, knockin'

Our campaign moved up a gear today with the start of door to door canvassing.

This is one of my favourite parts of being a candidate as to me it really is the raw coal face of political campaigning. It's just you and the voter. Modern campaigning focusses to much on targetting, market research, and carefully crafted political messages for my liking, and increasingly I think that voters are wise to these techniques.

A lot of research shows that while media blitzing tends to 'confirm' people's voting intentions, it is actually only personal face to face contact that has much of an ability to change people's opinions. My experience is that people are ususally so pleased to see a candidate fronting up on their doorstep that whatever their political opinion, they tend to be very polite and welcoming.

Today's canvassing around central Howick (one of our strong areas in 2002) got a really good response. Many of the residents were elderly, and by and large were pretty pleased with Labour's record in the areas effecting them.