I spent the afternoon phonebanking for my Congressman, David Wu. Basically we were just conducting a poll of unaffiliated voters to find out who they'd be voting for in November.
Three hours of calling yielded not too darn many responses. Most people weren't home; a significant minority were wrong or disconnected numbers; and about half of those who did answer didn't want to talk to us - and we had a code 'G' to mark down if they were particularly grouchy about it.
The first thing we were supposed to ask was who they were voting for for President. I got a lot more Kerry voters than Bush voters, and so did the other volunteers, which is a very good thing, considering all our calls today were being made to voters in enigmatic Washington County, a swing county in this, the swinging state of Oregon.
While our script called for us to offer lawn signs to Kerry supporters and ask if they wanted to volunteer or donate, the campaign staff told us to use our discretion there and only push people who sounded enthusiastic about their choice. I ended up offering signs to several people, but only two accepted. One woman said she'd put up Kerry-Edwards signs to piss off her neighbors.
Then we were supposed to ask them about who they were voting for for Congress - Wu or his opponent, Goli Ameri. Wu did even better than Kerry on this question, with even some Bush voters saying they'd be voting for him, and most Bush voters undecided. At this point the script called for us to say nice things about Wu, but again we were told to use our discretion; I usually told people to check out his website if they wanted to know more.
My last call ended the day on a great note - I got an ACT volunteer who was strong Kerry & Wu, wanted lawn signs, and was going to come down to the office to pick them up and talk to the staff about volunteering or dragging someone else in to volunteer for us. It was a good place to hang up the phone and go home, and I'd already been there an hour longer than I said I would, so I did.
I'm supposed to be phone-banking every Sunday until November. At first I was so nervous that I thought about taking myself off the list, going back to stuffing envelopes or something, but as the afternoon wore on it got easier. Next week I'm also supposed to scour my kitchen for snacky foods to feed the volunteers, as the phone bank apparently has no budget and the pantry was a little bare this afternoon.