Across Philadelphia, dozens of silver-haired, climate-conscious canvassers will be going door-to-door in recent weeks. Election Dayleave a green paper with instructions on how to register to vote this year.
“This is the most important consequence I’ve ever had,” climate broadcaster Daniel Carlson told CBS News. “I have voted for forty years.”
Carlson is part of Third Act, a climate activist group for people over the age of 60. The group is trying to mobilize voters on climate change in an election that has been dominated by worries about the economy, immigration and abortion access.
CBS News / Seiji Yamashita
CBS News polls have found climate change “not a factor” for 32% of voters in the presidential race, but for millions, it’s the top issue, according to the Environmental Voter Project, another non-profit group; EVP works to identify climate-minded voters and bring them to the polls.
In particular, EVP focuses on low-propensity climate voters – those who did not vote in the last presidential election and are concerned about climate change.
Nathaniel Sinnett, executive director of the EVP, said, “In Pennsylvania, we have identified 245,000 of these voters,” Sinnett told CBS News, and he has found an equally high number in the main battle of the state where the EVP is active. In 2020, the margin of victory of Joe Biden against Donald Trump in Pennsylvania which is 80,555.
EVP said it uses predictive modeling and data analytics to identify millions of registered voters who are focused on climate, then relies on voter files to direct efforts to environmentalists who are registered to vote but have not yet voted.
“We’re very pleased with what we’re seeing in the early voting, nearly 130,000 first-time climate voters have voted in the 19 states we work in,” said Nathaniel Sinnett, executive director of the Environmental Voter Project, or EVP. The five states where EVP tracks voters are battleground states — the group says it has identified hundreds of thousands of low-propensity climate voters in these battleground states:
- Arizona: 229,311
- Georgia: 491,369
- Nevada: 108,694
- North Carolina: 266,227
- Pennsylvania: 245,206
Sinnett acknowledged the model and data don’t guarantee the climate vote is a vote for the Democratic ticket, but early voters and environmental voters historically lean liberal.
EVP keeps track of the voters who have been identified and whether they have voted, and at a more detailed level, the group counts the voters focused on the climate found who did not vote in 2020 but cast a 2024 vote during this early voting. fall. Based on the early administration, according to Sinnett, in some states at war, the climate voters turned out to be higher than the general voters.
EVP has identified almost 230,000 first-time climate voters in Arizona in 2024, and on October 25, EVP has seen 5,514 of those who cast early ballots. In 2020, Arizona was decided by less than 11,000 votes. The group is seeing similar returns in other battleground states and hopes the effort will help climate-friendly candidates win.
“Climate voters are not the largest voting bloc in the country,” Sinnett said. “But this fall, climate voters could have a real impact on the margins, and in an election where all seven swing states are statistically tied, small moves on the margins will decide everything.”
CBS News / Seiji Yamashita
Third Act is another environmental group working with climate-concerned voters, but its focus is older Americans. It was founded by Bill McKibben, an environmentalist who has written more than a dozen books on the topic and has organized climate protests around the world. Although climate politics is often associated with young voters, McKibben thinks his generation has a unique perspective, having seen the civil rights and conservation movements of the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s.
“In our lifetime, we’ve seen a lot of changes, and a lot of them for the better. You know, when I was born, Kamala Harris and her husband couldn’t get married in half the country.”
Like EVP, McKibben and his group have experienced some reluctance by many climate-minded Americans to appear in polls.
“They care a lot about the climate, but maybe they just decided there’s nothing they can do, or whatever. So, we have to reach out and just say this is not all,” McKibben told CBS News. “The purpose of election is not salvation.”
However, environmental salvation is on Carlson’s mind. The 60-year-old is a pastor by day, and decided to make a trip from Schenectady, New York to Philadelphia to doorknock for the first time – he said he was trying to do his part to help boost turnout in the consequential election.
“The world that my generation will leave for future generations is definitely compromised and damaged in some pretty big ways, but I want to do everything I can to help future generations.”
Helen Grady, 85, a former Philadelphia school teacher, was also motivated to start canvassing when she heard that many students were considering not voting.
“It’s very infuriating, and it’s frustrating when you hear someone say, there’s no point in voting because both sides are broken,” he told CBS News. “I used to tell my high school students, ‘no vote, you can’t complain.’
