BY ABBY WICHTERMAN AND SARAH SCOBEE

Leading up to the Iowa Caucuses, campaigns are doing all that they can to gather support for their candidate. One way they do this is by sending out people to canvas neighborhoods. Volunteers do this by going door to door and trying to convince voters to support their candidate.

On February 1, canvassers went out into neighborhoods, when they returned later the groups realized they had different experiences.

One group was canvassing a neighborhood in order to promote Joe Biden. They were sent out to a nice neighborhood not far from the campaign office. 

While going door to door, almost everybody answered and was willing to talk about their stance on the election.

Axel Mueller, Wadsworth high school senior, canvassed for Biden.

“I was surprised to see that people actually answered,” stated Mueller. “A lot of times I thought it would be seen as an annoyance and I thought people were going to ignore us. The people were happy to talk to us about the caucus and see students taking initiative.”

 A majority of the houses canvassed by the Biden group, were already in support of his campaign but some were still undecided on who they would vote for in the caucus. Those undecided were still willing to consider Biden and have conversations about his policies and other candidate standings. 

“When people answered the door, they were super nice and respectful.” said Caleb Mann,  a junior from Lordstown. “They wanted to hear what we had to say about Joe Biden and his campaign and how we wanted them to go to the caucus.” 

Though the Biden group had positive results from canvassing, people who were canvassing for Bernie Sanders were not as fortunate.

The canvassers for Sanders went to an apartment complex that was a short walk from the office. While they were canvassing, they were often ignored by residents and some even asked them to leave.

“It was disappointing when we went out because we only had two people talk to us out of twenty houses,” said Wadsworth senior, Chris Steele. “One person we spoke to agreed with Bernie but had no interest in caucusing and the other person threatened to have us arrested if we didn’t leave. It was really defeating.”

They saw the difficulties campaigns deal with when trying to gain support from voters. 

Volunteers will continue to work on these campaigns leading up to the caucus doing various work such as cold calling and more canvassing. They are determined to gather as much support as possible before the caucus on Monday.