Finally!! A political canvasser has knocked on my door.

[GargoylesofBeelzebub]

Representative of a Labour candidate. He handed me a flyer and asked me what my thoughts were. I have been waiting for this moment for a LONG time!

I told him I would only be voting for candidates who recognised that the definition of a woman was someone of the female biological sex and would uphold the Supreme Court ruling.

He stood there grinding his teeth and said he had no idea what her stance on the matter was. 🙄 I expressed surprise given it’s a big topic in the news right now…

He denied it had ever cropped up and turned tail and ran.

Best tactic - if you can pull it off - is to act like a potential voter, ask lots of questions, appear engaged and open to persuasion, waste as much time as possible, then when the canvasser is winding up the encounter hit her/him with your red line on sex-based rights. You'd like to vote for them because of x,y or z, but you won't be able to do so for as long as the party poses a threat to women's safety, privacy and dignity (wording here depends on who you're talking to and which type of election).

“I’ll vote for you if you will tell me which topic is the least spoken about on the doorstep?”

I called my labour candidate out on it a few years ago and I told him I'd left the Labour party as neither of my complaints about Starmer and Lammy were dealt with (I'd love to know the individuals who were gatekeeping those complaints). He was most put out. He's joined the greens now and is one of three councillors for this area.

Interestingly he has NEVER once replied to any of the local issues I cc him into. Even environmental issues. Totally blanks me, twat. The labour chap occasionally replies and the (actually really nice) tory councillor almost always replies and cc's me in when he chases a local issue.

Sheryll Murray and her team were chased off our street by my "practically a communist" neighbour one year.

He was playing "Tomorrow Belongs To Me" out the window at the after an argument at the door and followed them up the road shouting all sorts of things at them.... I was convinced the police would arrive but nothing came of it.

I did tell the Reform canvassers that they were on the wrong road and not to come back to my door again.

Hate to break it to you all but

A) canvassers have one job, which is to establish voting intention. They are expressly discouraged from getting into doorstep chats about anything at all, because it means they will be delayed going to the next door and getting the next voter intention.

B) very few people care about sex based rights, or trans rights, and any vote gained by being publicly firmly on either side risks losing more votes than you gain (whatever a candidate truly thinks) because the debate is so toxic and polarised. People care about money, the NHS and immigration. I'm not saying it's right, just saying it's true.

Having been a canvasser for many years I can say that there are a few 'blacklisted' houses. Mainly due to outright nasty hostility or dangerousness, but also because of political hostility. If someone has been canvassed and said 'I will never vote for you in my life' then we won't bother again. But other parties still would unless you've said 'I will never vote for anyone again'. Which is the best thing to say if you want to avoid them coming.

@ Myalternate -
“No matter what ‘colour’ they represent, they lie. They’ll say anything you want them to for your vote.”

They really won’t. If you rock up at someone’s door representing a political party (and I’ve done enough of it), normally they will either say “we don’t vote for ….”, or they’ll ask what you think about something, and you tell them - you don’t know what they think, so what point in lying? If people say they don’t vote, I always try to persuade them to - I’d rather they voted for another party or spoiled their paper than didn’t vote: democracy relies on participation.

A) canvassers have one job, which is to establish voting intention. They are expressly discouraged from getting into doorstep chats about anything at all, because it means they will be delayed going to the next door and getting the next voter intention.
Are you saying politiical parties don't listen to voters? What a sad state of affairs.

@Dietcokey It's a bit different if it's the actual candidate who's canvassing. Labour candidate knocked before the last general election and she shouted at me. One of the other canvassers was someone I used to work with. He popped up to offer her some support and looked absolutely mortified when I said hello and used his name. They scuttled off with the candidate shouting over her shoulder about my overgrown tree.
Had the Lib Dems in our street when I was wfh on Wednesday. Very nice man but unable to talk about anything except bins.

What if someone said I'm a natural (Labour in my case) supporter but I won't vote for you until (for example) Bridget Phillipson lays the ehrc guidelines before parliament. Would you even feed that back as 'something that comes up on the doorstep'? I never get canvassers anyway but I feel that most parties, apart from the Tories under Kemi, can't actually be arsed to have a coherent policy on the subject.

It sort of depends on the area, the general mood I was getting from the doorsteps, the closeness of the contest. But probably not. It really is a very niche issue. I have had people say that their vote depended on fisheries policy, woodlands, gun rights. It would be in that kind of category for me. Unless several people mentioned it on a short space of time I wouldnt expect it to be recorded, even if I did mention it.

I have never had trans/sex rights mentioned as an issue on any doorstep I have canvassed. Contrast that with SEND and Benefits, which come up quite a lot (and then obviously things like the NHS and cost of living and immigration which come up all the time). Hyper local stuff comes up a lot too.

So if a potential voter asks them what the candidates position is on a particular issue they are not to answer? Hmm sounds like nonsense.

I bet if I asked about their position on any of those other issues you mentioned there be quite happy to tell me.

We are constantly being told that these issues are not being brought up on the doorstep which indicates that other issues ARE being brought up and fed back to the parties. So I’m very happy that I was able to bring this issue up.

Given how prominent this issue is in the media right now I do not believe that he doesn’t know the candidates position.

I’m sure you’re right. I’ve only ever spoken to one, last GE, and made up for not doing so before.

Oh I hope they come to me. I'll put on my big coat and stand outside in the cold and take them to the cleaners. I was a GP so I know how to push back on all the rubbish they spout about the health service and as for the walk in centres don't get me started....then there's the gender identity stuff. Can't wait!

I have now emailed the candidate to ask her directly as he left me a flyer with her email address on it.

My options are:

Tory- who was very supportive on a local issue but in a true believer in gender nonsense.

SNP-absolute arsehole whose conduct over the local issue I mentioned above was utterly disgraceful. And also very much toes the party line on gender nonsense.

Lib Dem-absolute fruitloop over gender nonsense

Independence for Scotland-someone who seems to have integrity and has been a sane voice in the gender debate but not sure I can bring myself to vote for an independence party.

Labour-voted for them last time but my vote depended on the answer to my email on gender and the Supreme Court.

Greens and reform aren’t listed as having candidates which doesn’t seem right but no way I’m voting for either party anyway.

so I may be forced to spoil my ballot.

Dietcokey · Today 08:48
Hate to break it to you all but ...

You are basically saying that canvassers are like those annoying people you get at supermarket entrances / exits, trying to flog you double glazing / gym membership / pet insurance.
It's all about what they get out of the transaction and they don't actually care about the customer / voter.

so I may be forced to spoil my ballot.
It's the old problem of do you vote for the individual or the Party? Your Tory may be an idiot but Kemi seems to get it.
And there's always holding your nose and doing a tactical vote. It doesn't get the result you want (because that option doesn't exist) but it does send a message.

Obviously we wouldn't just ignore the question. But the point is not to get into a debate about it. And often I have no idea what the candidate thinks about an issue or even what the party's policy is on it if it's not a mainstream issue.
The thing with the trans debate is that people who bring it up in any environment tend to be a) very opinionated about it and b) very knowledgeable about it, neither of which chimes with the likely ability of the canvasser were it to come up on the doorstep. Same with the other niche issues.

If someone directly asked me what the candidate's view on trans issues was, I would say I'll have to find out and get back to you. Then I probably wouldn't do either of those things unless it came up multiple times .

Trans stuff honestly never comes up. And whilst you say that it is prominent in the media, it really isn't. Occasionally it comes up in the media, or is brought up by a mischievous politician, but compared to a dozen other issues it is barely spoken about. Unless someone brings it up to the average voter, that average voter would be unlikely to give it a second's thought.

I wouldn't quite put it like that or make that comparison.

Canvassers are there to canvass opinion (ie find out someone's opinion) not to change opinion on the doorstep.

The canvasser/candidate/party cares a lot what people say their voting intention is. That's because if it's clear who is likely to vote a certain way, that information can be used to target election literature, make sure people get out to vote on election day, target potential future members / activists etc. It can also be used to inform campaign teams about the likelihood of victory and the potential worth of spending time and money in an area.

People often get confused between political campaigning (making the case for an idea) and election campaigning (making sure more people vote for you than for your opponents). Canvassing is firmly in the second category. It is literally entirely about identifying who will vote for which candidate. So the more information you get on that, the better. And the more time you spend debating things with a person, the less time there is to go to the next person and find out who they will be voting for.

I totally took up time but the point on getting data and moving on does make sense.

It is literally entirely about identifying who will vote for which candidate. So the more information you get on that, the better.
Like I said, it's all about you and getting into power. You don't care about the voter, only their vote.
It's symptomatic of current state of play and the lack of conviction politics.

Are you in Scotland? Its very prominent in the media here.

'Trans stuff' might never come up, and yes it's ridiculous how much they've shaped public policy given the numbers.

But women are 51% of the population and it's women's rights we're talking about here, not anything trans. Women have only had anything approaching equal rights for a vanishingly small amount of time in human history and we can see it's very easy for things to go backwards very quickly (Afghanistan, Iran). We are losing rights daily and losing the right to define our sex class will lead to further erosion of rights, how could it not? Rapes on NHS wards, nurses having to strip in front of male bodied individuals as a condition of employment - these things do matter. The lack of protection for women in hospitals I can guarantee is a big issue.

Most of the 51% know that men can't become women by saying they are, whether or not we feel courageous enough to say so openly.

So the issue is not 'trans' it's the erosion of rights of 51% of the population.

It's also the Sal Grover quote 'If you think that men can be women, I won't believe a single word you say about anything else. Because if you will lie about something so obvious, I will assume you lie about everything' .22 Aug 2025

Asking what a woman is is a good litmus test question for whether the candidate has any integrity or honesty at all.

Just read your full post and the use of trans and trans debate a few times shows you don’t realise it’s about women.

In addition that lack of insight runs through from a canvasser all the way up to the leader. Even the politicians don’t get it’s not about men at all. It’s women taking the lead.

They get hammered for it which is good.

I've been a canvasser in the past, and DietCokey is mostly right - the idea of canvassing is to identify your voters and then put everything you can into making sure they vote on the day. So good responses are "Yes, I'm definitely voting for your candidate" and "No, I'm definitely not voting for your candidate" - the latter being good in the sense that you don't waste any more time on them.

But you do of course get the middle ground respondents - people who say "I'll vote for the candidate who promises to do something about fly tipping" or "I'm undecided but I'm concerned about the two-child benefit cap" or whatever. And obviously you're not just going to walk away from that, you have to make some effort to engage.

Maybe the gender issue doesn't come up very often on the doorstep, though I don't think that necessarily means people don't care about it. And maybe they care about it more in some areas than others. I think I've only brought it up once or twice with a canvasser, largely because I don't have the energy to argue.