January 14th, 2015
Today was a calmer day compared to the first two days of my trip. We spent about four hours canvassing in neighborhoods in Londonderry, NH for Ted Cruz. For each house, we would go up to the door and ring the doorbell or knock on the door, and if the target voter answered, we talked to him or her about the election and if they had made up their mind on who they would support in the primary. If they seemed interested in Ted Cruz, we would give them literature in order for them to get to learn more about the candidate. We also gave voters that were leaning towards Ted Cruz a bumper sticker and a pocket constitution.
In class, we learned that money given to a campaign can be spent in many different ways, including ads, media, get-out-the-vote efforts, yard signs, and more. In my opinion, a strong campaign needs to have a good ground game, meaning they need to spend a decent amount of money on canvassing and communicating with voters. I also learned in class that field funds are growing nationally, especially in the states of Iowa and New Hampshire, because researchers have found that campaigns with a good ground game tend to do better than those that do not. I feel that the Ted Cruz campaign is doing really well because the campaign is spending money on fieldwork so that we can find and speak to the voters that have the best chance of voting for Ted Cruz on February 9th.
After canvassing ended, we decided as a class to go to the Bernie Sanders town hall in at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH. Throughout the summer of 2015, Bernie would attract thousands upon thousands of people to his rallies, so I was expecting the rally to be held in a large stadium where everybody could fit inside one room to watch. I was wrong; the event was held in a smaller setting with only a couple thousand people, with a few hundred people in other overflow rooms, including our class. Even though we had to watch the actual rally on the screen, Bernie Sanders was kind enough to come to the overflow rooms and speak to us briefly before the rally, which I thought was really neat. The town hall was more of a rally with a few questions at the end, and the speech was one that I had heard mostly before. He talked about Wall Street, free public college, and the one-percent, which were his typical talking points. One criticism that I do have about the rally is that he didn't take time to talk about bigger issues such as the threat of ISIS and gun control. Actually, he did talk about gun control, but it was very brief and it did not come up until an audience member asked him about it. Also, even though I am a Republican and Bernie is a Democrat, it was really cool to go to a rally where most of those in attendance did not agree with my views.
Even though today was a rather calm day compared to the rest of my trip so far, it was still a rewarding day for me because I got to continue my hands-on learning experience that this trip has given me the opportunity to participate in. I was also able to attend my first Democratic rally ever, which was a cool experience. I know my class plans to either attend a Carly Fiorina town hall or a Jeb Bush town hall tomorrow, but we are not sure yet. I'm currently leaning towards Fiorina, but I'll see what my class wants to do and I'll just follow suit.
In Liberty,
Jacob Stech '18
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