Obama-style canvassing with France's Socialists

[WestVirginiaRebel]

France 24:

FRANCE 24 joined a group of Socialist Party canvassers this week on the streets of Nimes in southern France, the only region where far-right candidate Marine Le Pen came out on top in the presidential election's first round.

Across France teams of Socialist activists are knocking on doors and talking to voters, in a door-to-door campaign inspired by US President Barack Obama’s successful 2008 campaign.

FRANCE 24 joined a small team of Socialist Party (PS) canvassers working the suburbs of Nimes in southern France as the country gears up for the second round of the presidential election on May 6.

Locally, there is much at stake for the PS. Nimes is the main city in the Gard – the only administrative region in France where far-right candidate Marine Le Pen came top in the first round of the presidential vote.

Incumbent President Nicolas Sarkozy will face off against PS candidate Francois Hollande in the second round, and although polls give Hollande a ten-point lead, much still depends on how Le Pen’s supporters choose to vote.

The PS activists are leaving nothing to chance.

Beaming optimism and big smiles

Their approach and strategy is surprisingly American in a country where door-to-door canvassing is virtually unknown. For the first time in a presidential campaign, the socialist-party has organised a large-scale effort to draw in left-wing sympathisers who might have otherwise abstained, drawing inspiration from the Obama canvassing method.

Activists are furnished with lists of households in overwhelmingly left-voting neighbourhoods that have abstained from voting in previous elections (not the names) and these form the core of the highly coordinated strategy to target undecided voters.

Each canvasser has been given sales-type training and approaches the work with beaming optimism and big smiles.

They follow strict guidelines on how many minutes to spend talking with each person, how to focus on listening rather than lecturing, and to provide as much information as they can as efficiently as possible.

“People who don’t agree with us get two minutes and those who do get five,” said Laurent Thomas, a council gardener who organises all canvassing in Nimes and has been out on the streets every night for the past four weeks.

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If they really want to follow Obama's style they need to start compiling lists of enemies and promising jobs to their biggest donors...