Knocking on doors

I started the campaign with the wish to knock on all the doors in the Division, and the fact that I’m trying is why I haven’t written anything for ages (that and a brief visit to London to support a friend running in the London marathon which was a great experience).

In fact, I won’t be able to knock on every door – there just isn’t time – but I did decide to do virtually all of the second leaflet deliveries myself, and I’ve knocked on about 2/3 of the doors (with voters: I’ve ignored holiday rental homes, and there’s many of those in some places. They can be often be identified by the house name, by the rental company logo outside. And an awful lot have a model boat in the window: that’s not an absolute indicator of a holiday let. But it’s a pretty good sign.)

It’s been good to see parts of the area I’ve never been to before, especially as I’m interested in architecture, design and so on. So since last writing I’ve knocked on about 1,200 doors (and spoken to about 3 or 400 people). What have I learned?

1.       Electric doorbells are unreliable. Unless their owners just didn't want to speak to me.

2.       People are generally very polite even if they disagree: the number of abusive people has been less than on the fingers of one hand – and even then they weren’t very abusive.

3.       People do seem to value meeting a candidate, even if they don’t support them.

4.       There are a few common themes, similar to my experience the previous week: wind farms (anti), dualling the A1, resident’s car parking, the state of the roads, a lack of jobs, some planning decisions. All of which chimes with my views and the Conservative manifesto. Where people comment on national issues, they worry about the economy, whether the Government is being effective (although most appreciate it was handed a poisoned chalice) and more dislike the EU than support it. All understandable.