The race for Pennsylvania’s 10th Congressional District is one of the closest in the country. An October 25 New York Times/Siena College poll puts Democrat Janelle Stelson and Rep. Scott Perry tied at 48%, and Silver Bulletin shows the race narrowing from almost a 5-point Stelson lead in September to a paltry 1.2-point lead now — well within the margin of error.
Graphic: Silver Bulletin US House Polling Average for Pennsylvania 10th, 10/30/2026.
It’s in that context that we can be grateful for the work of Changing the Conversation for Progress (CTC for Progress), which has spent the past 15 months having extended, empathetic “deep-canvassing” conversations with the voters who are most likely to be ignored by the candidates and missed by the polls.
Over the October 24-25 weekend, CTC for Progress volunteers converged on PA-10 around Harrisburg and completed 104 deep-canvassing conversations, bringing the year’s total to 3,302.
Deep-canvassing conversations take longer than traditional door-knocking, but they build trust, change hearts and minds, and surface Democratic voters who have every intention of voting but don’t know how. In one case this past weekend, a would-be voter told longtime CTC volunteer Barbara Reisman that she’d “already voted” by filling out a form on an iPad in a parking lot. Luckily, Barbara realized it was a voter registration conversation and helped her make a plan to vote on Election Day.
Now, CTC volunteers are calling 1,600 of the voters they’ve talked to this year to help them make a voting plan — and they’ve already reached 650 by October 27.
Graphics: Changing the Conversation (CTC) 2022 and 2024 deep-canvassing voter turnout charts.
If you want to learn more about deep canvassing, check out CTC’s explainer page, which goes in depth into the empirical underpinnings of this approach to voter engagement. The work pays off: Using public records, CTC found that, in 2024, voters they talked to actually voted at a 21-point higher rate than other voters.
