Get out to Participate: Door-to-door Canvassing to Improve Civic Engagement

‘Get out the vote’ campaigns have been found to be effective in increasing voter turnout both overall and amongst those with a lower propensity to vote. However, little has been said about the ability of similar-style mobilisation campaigns to encourage participation in other types of civic engagement, such as citizens’ assemblies, which usually require much higher levels of engagement and greater personal costs. Further, while studies have found general support for citizens’ assemblies, willingness to participate is higher amongst those already more politically engaged and with higher levels of education. Given descriptive representation is a key principle in recruiting participants, this uneven distribution is problematic not only as it may result in the absence of certain voices from the discussion, but it risks undermining the legitimacy of the assembly itself. As such, finding mechanisms to increase the registration rate, or overcoming barriers to non-registration in those subgroups with low propensity to register, is a considerable concern for proponents of citizens’ assemblies. In this paper, we explore the impact of door-to-door canvassing on registration for the 2023 Southampton Citizens’ Climate Assembly (SCCA). Using randomised clusters of addresses that received Assembly invitations, we mobilised 9 door canvassers to endeavour to contact 1,224 households over the 10 days before registration closed. The canvassing involved two steps; the first was a reminder about the SCCA and an opportunity for members of the public to ask questions, and the second involved an optional survey regarding motivations for registering or reasons for not registering for the Assembly, as well as collecting demographic and attitudinal data to match that collected in the registration survey. Combining these datasets allows us to quantitatively compare the registration rates between those who received a door-knock and those who did not across differently sized and situated address clusters. Further, we utilise the data collected from the canvassing and registration surveys to explore differences in demographics and attitudinal variables of those who registered and those who did not. This two-fold approach enables us to understand if door-knocking is effective at increasing registration and whether door-knocking is more effective for targeting specific groups. Lastly, we analyse the reasons given for not intending to register, as well as what would motivate a person to register, to identify what barriers to participation exist, for whom, and how they might be mitigated through assembly or recruitment design.