Editing Canvassing (section)

=== Voter identification and decline ===
As corruption faded, parties returned to using canvassing to win votes through persuasion and get-out-the-vote (GOTV) efforts. This was especially true of the new socialist parties such as the [[Labour Party (UK)|Labour Party]] in the United Kingdom, and the [[Co-operative Commonwealth Federation|CCF]] in Canada who had little money but enthusiastic volunteer bases who could be deployed to door steps.<ref>{{Citation |last=Berger |first=Stefan |title=Party Organization |date=December 15, 1994 |work=The British Labour Party and the German Social Democrats, 1900–1931 |pages=70–132 |url=https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198205005.003.0003 |access-date=January 31, 2024 |publisher=Oxford University Press |doi=10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198205005.003.0003|isbn=978-0-19-820500-5 |url-access=subscription }}</ref>

The years after the [[Second World War]] saw a general decline in canvassing. Political scientists began to question the utility of traditional campaigns. The [[Michigan model]] of voter behaviour became the accepted wisdom. It argued that voters had deep-set partisan loyalties, and that changes in such loyalties take years to develop. A simple knock on the door will do nothing to change a voter's opinion. Parties thus switched their canvassing resources away from persuading voters, focusing only on identifying their supporters and making sure they voted.<ref name="DenverHands2013">{{cite book|author1=David Denver|author2=Gordon Hands|title=Modern Constituency Electioneering: Local Campaigning in the 1992 General Election|date=October 23, 2013|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-135-22162-1}}</ref> The British Labour Party adopted the Reading System developed by [[Ian Mikardo]] to win the [[Reading (UK Parliament constituency)|Reading]] constituency in 1945. It was based on concentrating exclusively on pro-Labour areas and boosting their turnout, while ignoring non-supporters.<ref>Jon Lawrence. ''Electing Our Masters : The Hustings in British Politics from Hogarth to Blair.'' OUP Oxford, March 26, 2009, pg. 146</ref>

Even these approaches were found wanting. [[David Butler (psephologist)|David Butler]] in his Nuffield Model of UK elections found that during the 1950s and 1960s, local campaigns had no effect on the results. With the rise of [[television]], resources were shifted from the ground to mass market advertising, with canvassing seen as a relic of the past. [[Ivor Crewe]] argued that "constituency organizing counts for next to nothing in the television age."<ref name="DenverHands2013">{{cite book|author1=David Denver|author2=Gordon Hands|title=Modern Constituency Electioneering: Local Campaigning in the 1992 General Election|date=October 23, 2013|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-135-22162-1}}</ref> One political scientist wrote there was a belief that canvassing was an "elaborate ritual bringing some sense of gratification to the participants, but making no difference to election results."<ref name="ReferenceA"/>