Yep, I literally get paid (almost as well as my last job requiring a degree did, this just isn’t permanent) to canvas for progressive politics in a swing state.
Honestly, I wouldn’t do it if I wasn’t getting paid, even though I firmly believe getting out the vote for progressives (or as close as we can manage at any rate) is important. There’s so much money being pumped into it, that I’m not willing to give my time for free. I’m not in the top 10%, so my time is actually valuable.
But getting paid means I’ve had conversations with ~200 voters in the last week, the majority of whom are voting dem up and down the ticket, even if they used to be strong republicans. Maybe it won’t help overall, but we have a GOP-sponsored referendum almost nobody has heard of, for which our org is encouraging a no vote, so if nothing else this effort may help defeat that.
(Hopefully this plug is ok, it’s not my organization, I just work with them. If not I’ll edit it out.) If anyone reading this is in the US, and interested in getting paid (well paid, and with insurance available from day 1) for canvassing work for a couple months, check out the outreach team’s website. They have open positions for various sponsored regional campaigns in lots of important areas across the US, and they hire quickly with minimal hoops to jump through. I worked with them for the 2020 election as well, and in both cases it was 2 days from interview to start date. https://www.theoutreachteam.net/
I’m a pro-immigration canvasser in a rural-ish area of a swing state, and I’ve seen a lot of dem canvassers from other orgs on my turfs.
I’ve seen a car of people putting out door hangers for trump, but they weren’t canvassing at all, just leave the thing and take off. Meanwhile there are a dozen dem flyers there already. That’s it. That’s the extent of what I’ve seen out there.
In 2020 I’d run into lots of canvassers for trump… buuuuuuuuuut those groups didn’t get paid like they were supposed to, and those canvassers got super salty. Rightly so. It’s no wonder nobody wants to do it this time around.