Welcome to A Climate Change, the show where we talk with change makers and thought leaders who are taking action to stop the existential threat of climate change. I’m your host, Matt Matern, today on the show, we’re joined by Nathaniel Stinnett, who’s the founder of the environmental voter project. Nathaniel has been called a climate visionary by the New York Times and been named the voting guru by the Environmental publication Grist.

He founded the environmental voter project in 2015 to address the issue of millions of environmentalists not voting. The non partisan organization aims to make environmental issues politically unavoidable by increasing voter turnout. We discuss the challenges of political engagement in the climate movement and the innovative, data driven strategies his team uses to reach and activate non voting environmentalists in swing states across the country.

I’m excited to share this episode with you as Election Day is basically here. Reminder, if you haven’t done so already, make sure to go out and vote. Many states have already begun early voting. Don’t know how Visit vote.gov to register and find your nearest polling place. All right, without further ado, here’s Nathaniel Stinnett, welcome to the show, Nathaniel.

Oh, thanks, Matt. I’m really excited to be here.

Well, tell us a little bit about your background, your trajectory. How did you end up in the position you’re at?

Yeah, so I came to the environmental voter project, the organization I run, from the political world, rather than the climate and environmental world. And I’d been running a lot of campaigns, local, state and federal, mostly in Massachusetts, but also elsewhere in New England. And was always just deeply frustrated by the fact that whenever we polled people who were likely to vote in this election we were trying to win, almost none of them listed climate and environmental issues as a high priority.

And no matter how great a climate candidate you’re working for, if none of the voters care deeply about this issue, boy is it hard to spend your time and money talking about that issue. And that frustration lived with me for a while, and to be honest, Matt, I didn’t think there was an obvious solution to it, but then, after running a mayoral campaign in Boston, now about 10 years ago.

I started stumbling across polling data that really blew my mind and made me realize that the problem That underlied this this lack of voter demand for Climate Leadership, wasn’t that too few people cared about climate change in the environment, rather, it was that too few of the people who already cared bothered to show up and vote. And that led me to starting this organization that just focused on mobilizing climate voters?

Yeah, well, it’s, it’s interesting. Those of us who are, you know, shouting from the root rooftops that climate change is real and it’s an existential threat, are kind of surprised when we have the presidential debate, and it’s barely discussed for two minutes, and to me, it’s the most important issue facing the planet, and we got about two minutes on it or something.
Yeah. Well, you know, politicians are in the business of winning elections, and when you’ve got limited time and limited money, you have limited bandwidth to go with that, to communicate with voters. And you know, mainstream media is the same way, if you’re CBS or NBC and you’ve got a 90 minute debate, boy, is it hard to justify spending a serious amount of time talking about the thing that’s like, the ninth most important issue to voters. And so I get it, I get it.

And, you know, we in the climate movement don’t like to admit our weakness. I think a lot of activists don’t like to admit weaknesses. But I think the simple truth is, we in the climate movement don’t have nearly as much political power as we need. Politicians aren’t scared of us.

Politicians aren’t worried about the political consequences if they don’t lead on climate. And that’s that’s not our fault, that’s their fault. But we if we want to succeed, we need to do something about that. We need to build up our political power.

Okay, so that’s the reason. For the project. And then, how did you launch it?

Yeah, so in the very end of 2015 and all through 2016 we launched a proof of concept just in Boston, Massachusetts, where I live. And what we wanted to do was for 16 months, use every election, local, state and federal elections, to try to prove out two things.

One, could we accurately identify people who list climate as a top priority yet weren’t voting? And then two, could we get them to start voting? And so we worked in multiple elections over that 16 month period to try to figure that out. And first we had to raise the money. We raised $400,000 in a crowdfunding campaign, and then for 16 months, tried to prove out these two things.

And by the end of that period, we had killed it on both metrics. We were really, really accurately identifying these non voting environmentalists, and then in randomized control trials, we were proving that we were increasing turnout among the ones we communicated with compared to a control group that we weren’t talking to. And once we had all that data, we could just start expanding into additional states.

Well, tell us how you identified this group, because that’s challenge number one, and then you can go into challenge number two of how to get them activated and doing something.

Yeah. So what we do is we build predictive models on voter files, which, as you might know, is the same technique that most big campaigns now use to identify voters. So first, it starts with us polling huge numbers of people, like 10s of 1000s of voters, but we only ask them one question. We say, Hey, what’s your number one most important political issue. Then we isolate the people who say climate and environmental issues are their number one priority.

All right. Then we work with data scientists to try to learn as much as we can about these people who said climate is their number one priority and the characteristics that define different groups of them, and then we start trying to find other people who are like them all around their state. And it’s a long iterative process, and we test and build these models such that at the end of it, what we are able to do is identify all the likely climate first voters in a state.

Now to be clear, Matt, it’s a predictive model, and predictive is the operative word. So it’s not 100% accurate, but it’s about as accurate as you can get without having to interview every single individual voter in a state, which you’re obviously never going to be able to do so at the end of this process, you know, we’ve, we’ve assigned a score to every single voter.

So tell us, in terms of, you know, this could be a very valuable piece of information to environmental groups that are that are trying to activate people that will actually vote other than your own. Do you share any of this data and your findings with others?

So we share our findings. We are not legally permitted to share the granular data because it’s built on top of public voter files. And you can’t take this data and then give it to other people. The companies that rent out voter file access. You can’t just take their product and then give all the data to someone else for free, but what we can do is provide analysis to other groups that sort of one level up from the individual level.

And so this is one thing that we love to do with partner nonprofits, is we say, Hey, would it be helpful for us to let you know the demographic characteristics and geographic location of all of the neighborhoods with lots of environmentalists in southeastern Alabama, or would it be helpful to know in X legislative district how many people we’ve identified who care deeply about the environment and how many of them vote versus don’t vote things like that. We we share all the time, all the time.

So tell me, I read recently that voter engagement is kind of at an all time high for this 2024, presidential election, and that a very large percentage of registered voters are likely to vote, and it’s, it’s so people are more engaged than ever. So are environmental voters going to get to the polls? And aren’t, You know, I would think that an environmental voter in in this race is, is going to be a voter? Votes, but you’re is that? Is that true? Is that a misconception on my part?

Well, it’s, it’s hard to predict the future, right? I don’t have a crystal ball on what’s going to happen on turnout, but what I can say is that it’s a misconception. If people think environmentalists show up to vote all the time because they don’t, and I can give you some numbers and some reasons for it.

So first off, if we look back at the most recent midterm election, 2022 we estimate from our voter file data that close to 13 million already registered voters who list climate as a top priority skipped that election, 13 million. If we go back to the 2020 presidential election, 8.1 million skipped that election, an election that was decided by 45,000 votes in three states. So there are a lot of environmentalists who don’t vote, and in most states, they under vote the overall electorate. So they are disproportionately poor voters.

Why do you think that is, it’s kind of fascinating.

Yeah, yeah. So there are two things that are likely going on. And I use the word likely because it’s very hard in social science to figure out why people don’t do things. It’s a little bit easier to figure out how to get them to do things. But what is likely going on are two reasons. First, people who list climate and other environmental issues as their top priority are disproportionately young and disproportionately people of color, two groups that not only just vote less often, but are always the object of voter suppression efforts.

I mean, if anybody, anywhere is trying to make it harder for someone to vote, chances are they are either targeting young people or people of color, and that’s the beating heart of the modern environmental movement. But Matt, that’s not the only thing that’s going on, because even if you look within a single demographic group, like, say, black voters, ones who care about the environment still vote less often than other black voters.

So it’s not just this causal, this this correlation that’s going on with with demography. What ought what is also going on is we are oddly apolitical in the climate movement. And when I say that, I know it rubs some people the wrong way. So let me explain what I mean by this. If you ask people how they try to address climate change, probably the first five or 10 things they will say to you have to do with their own personal lives on a daily basis, change how they get to work. They eat differently.

They change the electricity they consume. They compost a lot of things that are very important, but let’s admit it, they are weirdly apolitical. I mean, you would never hear someone who’s concerned about healthcare talk that way. You would never hear someone who’s concerned about gun violence talk that way.

People who are concerned about gun violence know that it is a systemic political problem that requires a systemic political solution, but we in the climate movement, we we look to our own personal lives, and we never think of it as being a systemic political problem, and that leads to a lot of this lower turnout.

So tell us a solution. What’s the solution? How do you turn on these environmentalists to become voters?

Yeah. So here’s the really interesting thing. The environmental voter Project is an environmental group that never talks about the environment. We rarely even talk about climate change, not because we don’t like to, but because what we have found is that if you’re good at identifying these people, then your only goal is to get them to vote, and if your only goal is to get them to vote, you can be completely agnostic about your language, right?

Like we don’t need to talk about climate change, we could talk about chocolate chip cookies, if that’s what it takes to get them to vote. And what all of our research has found is that trying to rationally convince people about the importance of voting because of an issue that they care about doesn’t work at all. It doesn’t work at all. Instead, the types of thing that work are treating people as social beings rather than rational beings.

We try to figure out what social norms are they trying to fit into, and how can we use little like peer pressure, nudges and things like that to get them to vote? And so to give you some examples, we will call people up and we’ll say, Hey, Matt, did you know last time there was an election, 113 people on your block of Main Street turned up to vote. It’s like pure juvenile peer pressure, but it works. It works. We also we will use something.

This is a really interesting concept, because I think it’s something that people have experienced in their everyday life. It’s based off a psychological, behavioral psychology concept known as endowed progress. But have you ever been to a coffee shop mat where they they give you, like, a good customer card that has, like, all these circles that you need to get stamped, and then you get a free coffee

Sure. Yeah. So there was a famous behavioral economics experiment done a few years ago where half the people at a at a big coffee franchise were given one of those cards that had 10 circles on it, and the other half were given a card that had five circles on it. Okay?

So if you got a card with five circles, you bought a coffee, they put a stamp on it, and they said, Okay, Matt, you get four more stamps, and you get a free coffee. But the next person got a card with 10 stamps, they bought a coffee, and the person the barista, went, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and gave them six stamps. Now both of you still need to get four more stamps to get a free coffee, right?

But one of you feels like you’re 1/5 of the way there. The other feels like they’re six tenths of the way there. And of course, the one who’s six feels that they’re six tenths of the way there. Bought their coffee so much faster because they are endowed with a sense of progress. How do we use that to get people to vote? Well, there are a whole bunch of people who have never voted before, and we don’t want to make it seem like they’re going from zero to one, like they’re doing something for the very first time, and so instead, we send them digital ads and direct mail that just has three lines with check boxes next to them.

The first one says you’re registered to vote, check, the next one says you’re active on the voter rolls, check, then the third line just says, Be a good voter, and there’s an empty box. It’s like they’re two thirds of the way there. It’s like you’re almost at the finish line. Matt, the last step is just voting, and it seems like a very simple almost like weird thing, but in our randomized control trial, it sends turnout through the roof because we’re social beings, and these little nudges are in many ways, much more powerful than trying to logically convince someone of the importance of their vote.

Tell us about your successes and and how you’ve moved the needle in various elections and, and, I guess, you know, bring it to this particular election. What? What’s your involvement going going on right now?

Yeah, so we measure our impact in two ways. One is in specific elections, and the other is over the long term. In specific elections, we measure our impact through randomized control trials. Very briefly, what a randomized control trial is is, let’s say we identify 500,000 unlikely to vote, environmentalists in Pennsylvania. We do not start talking to all 500,000 of them.

Instead, before we talk to a single one, we randomly set aside about 15% in a control group, and we never talk to them. Then the remaining 85% they’re the ones we canvas and call and mail and send digital ads to all with this behavioral science, informed messaging, then the election happens, and afterwards, a lot of your listeners might not know this, but whether you vote or not is public record. Who you vote for is secret, obviously, but whether you vote or not is public record.

So after the election, we can see how many low propensity climate voters in our control group voted, and then compare it to how many voted in our treatment group, the people who got our messaging. And what that enables us to do is isolate what our sole impact was on turnout, while controlling for all outside variables.

And in those randomized control trials, we have been solely responsible for boosting turnout among our targets by as much as 1.8 percentage points in statewide general elections, 3.6 percentage points in statewide primaries and 5.7 percentage points in local elections. And I know those might not sound like big numbers to some people, but ask Donald Trump how big a deal 1.8% is in Pennsylvania. And I’ll tell you, these are big, big numbers. Big numbers.

That’s that swings the election. I mean, probably 1/10 of that could swing this election.

So that’s right, that’s right. And over the long term, we track these people who we’ve spoken to, and follow their voting history, and we can see, since we launched that small proof of concept in Boston that I was telling you about, we’ve now communicated with 10 point 5 million unique individual voters, all of whom were pretty awful voters, or else we wouldn’t have been talking to them in the first. First place.

And as of a few months ago, Matt we could see that 1.8 million of them had become such consistent voters that they had voted in their most recent federal election, their most recent state election, and even their most recent local election, they had become super voters. That long term metric is the one that we are most proud of. Now, to be clear, that’s different than a randomized control trial. I can’t claim that we’re solely responsible for turning 1.8 million non voters into super voters.

We are most assuredly not solely responsible for that, but we’re pretty darn responsible. No one else has now been active in 2000 elections like we have, using every dinky little election as a way to change people’s behavior.

Now, are you doing this across the country, in every you know, with every single voter in America, or how large is this operation?

Great question. We are not doing this in every state. We work in 19 states, and we don’t pick and choose states based on sexy battlegrounds in one off elections. Our goal is the long term growth of political power of the climate movement. And so what we do to choose our states is we look and see, where are there states that have a disproportionately large population of non voting environmentalists, because that’s where we can make the biggest difference.

Two, we look for states that don’t just have elections in even years, but also in odd years, because the more bites at the apple you get talking to people and trying to get them to vote, the better your long term impact is on the electorate.

And then three, we don’t just care about federal policy making. We also care about state and local policy making. If you can change the mayor of a big city, or if you can change to public utility commissioners, oftentimes you can have a really, really big impact in a way that you can’t by changing a member of Congress.

o we’re in 19 states, and just this fall, in those 19 states, we are targeting 4.8 million already registered climate first voters who we think are unlikely to vote this fall, unless mobilized to do so. And we think they’re unlikely because we’ve looked at their public voting histories. Matt and each of these 4.8 million did not vote in 2020, or any election since then.

So of those 19 states, I want to know which of those 19 or the seven swing states so we are, even though you don’t care, maybe some of our list,

I’d be shocked. I’m shocked to hear that they’re interested in that. Matt, so we work in five of the seven swing states. So we work in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada. We do not work in Wisconsin and Michigan.

And the reason it’s a pretty darn good one, there actually aren’t that many non voting environmentalists in Wisconsin and Michigan. If you care about Wisconsin and Michigan, we don’t want you to give us your money.

We want you to go and support some other group that can have a bigger impact. But in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, we have identified absurdly large numbers of these non voting environmentalists, and we can see an early voting data Matt, that we’re already getting 10s. I mean, now well over 100,000 of them to vote. They have already voted. They are first time climate voters.

That’s fantastic. So which which state of those five has the most kind of inactive environmental voters? What? How does the ranking go of those five swing states?

Georgia, by far Georgia, we are targeting 491,000 potential first time climate voters in Georgia. And to give your listeners some context. Remember that now infamous call that Donald Trump had with Brad raffensberger As secretary. Votes Exactly. Just give me 11,780 votes. Georgia has been decided by really, really small margins. It was decided by fewer than 12,000 votes, and we’re targeting 491,000 potential first time climate voters.

Or let’s take Arizona. Arizona was even closer than Georgia. Four years ago, Arizona was decided by 10,000 votes. And change yet we are targeting, I believe it’s 226,000 potential first time climate voters in Arizona. We’re targeting almost 250,000 in Pennsylvania, almost 260,000 in North Carolina, and 110,000 in Nevada.

And the reason these numbers roll off my tongue is because we’re obsessed with data at the environmental voter project, and we literally, I mean, not to be creepy about it, but like we know these people.

By name and street address, and we spend so much time canvassing and calling and mailing and sending digital ads to them, and once we see that one of them votes, we immediately pull them out of our contact universe and go on to the next person, because we know if we can get these people to vote, not only will they make a difference this fall, Matt, but they will then be more likely to vote in their local elections next winter, and you better believe we’re going to follow up with them for that.

And the more we get these people to vote, the closer they become to being habitual voters, who then really, really start to move policy making.

Well, for some of you listeners out there who haven’t run for office or been politically active. You may not know the power of these databases that Nathaniel is talking about. I I did a presidential run in 2020 as a Republican against Trump, and was introduced to some of these databases. And some of them may be used for good in the environmental voter project. And then you have the Koch brothers, you know.

What is it, American Progress, you know, which is not used for, you know, good. It’s the Koch brothers trying to pollute America as much as they can so they can make billions of dollars. So tell us a little bit more about these, these databases. I think listeners and people have a need to know what’s going on behind the scenes here.

Yeah, and I’m so glad you brought this up, because I think a lot of people still assume that political campaign targeting is where it was 20 years ago, in part because that’s how it’s reported, they think, oh, you know, the election is going to be decided by soccer moms or NASCAR dads or something like that.

But the truth is, campaigns now target on an individual basis, and they have a list of every registered voter in every state, and they know a decent amount about those voters and who they’re likely to support and what they’re likely to care about, but perhaps most importantly, Matt, they know what elections they vote in. And I know I said this earlier, but boy, does it bear repeating. Who you vote for is secret, but whether you vote or not is public record.

And not only is it public record, but it’s probably the essential building block to how all campaigns are run and all policy is made, because, as you probably know from your own campaign, the first decision any campaign makes is okay with limited time and limited money.

Who are we going to talk to, and who are we not going to talk to, and if you literally know by name and street address, which people in a particular state have a history of voting in the election you’re trying to win, well that’s preciously important data that’s really going to talk to, and that’s in the policies that are going to be made to make those people happy.

So that’s why, like, Social Security has always been the third rail, because older people vote, and so anybody who’s a politician who wants to say anything negative about Social Security is going to get zapped by a very active piece of the electorate.

That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. I mean, politicians, and I know this sounds cynical to many people like politicians don’t care about non voters, and they literally know who all of them are in their district. And I know that sounds awful, but think for a minute, Matt, like, do we think it’s wrong that Starbucks doesn’t care about people who don’t drink coffee.

No. Do we think that Ford Motor Company is awful because they don’t market their cars to two year olds who can’t drive like No, all of these companies market their products to people who are likely to buy them, and politicians market themselves to people who are likely to vote, and they know who they are, by name and street address.

So tell us, are you a non partisan organization? Have you? Do you work with Republicans and Democrats or nobody? Or how does this work?

We work with nobody. We are not bipartisan. We are non partisan. We stay out of coordinating or helping or harming politicians completely. And there are a few reasons for that. One, just legal reasons. If you decide to help campaigns, it becomes really, really difficult. But two, we we take kind of a different, almost upside down approach to our theory of change than most political organizations do.

Most political organizations take what I would call a supply side approach to the political marketplace. They say, hey, let’s elect the right people, and they’ll supply the right policy. And that’s kind of right. Yeah. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s really important to elect the right people, but our approach is more demand side.

Our approach is, you know what, politicians really like winning elections. So they always have to go where the voters are. So let’s make sure the enough voters are demanding the right kind of leadership, and then politicians will follow, not out of the goodness of their hearts, but because nothing motivates a politician more than the prospect of winning or losing an election.

And so when you take that approach, that means there is room to push and pull politicians, not just in the middle, but also in the most liberal districts in the country and the most conservative districts in the country.

And I truly believe that, I mean, it’s really explained a little bit by the Republican Party shift, you know, on issues such as the IRA and that 19 or 18 congressmen have come out saying they would not vote to rescind the IRA.

That’s exactly right, Matt, I mean, you know, I’m a political guy. I’m not a policy guy, but even I could figure out that the IRA was put together in a very politically shrewd way, in that it built its own political constituencies wherever its money was spent.

You build a factory somewhere, and oh, my god, does it become like political poison to then work against that? You know that legislation that that creates the tax credits to run that factory and so, yeah, the IRA was very, very good at building its own political constituency.

So where are you at now in terms of our election that’s coming up in what is it 12 days?

Yeah. So as I said, we’re targeting 4.8 million of these potential first time climate voters across 19 states, we’ve sent almost 3 million pieces of direct mail and volunteer postcards. We, I think, have had 400 door to door canvassing shifts.

We have made almost 5 million phone calls, and in the last 10 days before the election, we’re probably going to make another four or 5 million just over the last five days. Of GOTV, of get out the vote, we’re going to be trying to fill 4825 volunteer phone banking shifts. Matt, so this is going to be a huge, huge turnout operation.

So in terms of your on the ground game, do you find that a phone call is as effective as a door knock?

We think of it with two variables, effectiveness and efficiency. Okay, so first on effectiveness, no, a phone call is not as effective as a door knock. If you define effectiveness as the increase in turnout per contact made, door to door, canvassing is still the single best way to increase turnout, bar none, better than mail, better than digital ads, better than phone calls, but it certainly isn’t the most efficient.

I mean, if you’re one person on a two hour shift, even if it’s a weekday evening, where you’ve got the best contact right around, maybe you’re going to talk to five people, six people in two hours. That ain’t efficient. Whereas phone banking is very efficient.

And then in between efficiency and effectiveness is direct mail and digital ads. But here’s, I think, the really important thing to note, Matt, or two important things. First, oh my gosh, does messaging matter? Right?

If you’ve got a message that isn’t proven to increase turnout, it doesn’t matter if you’re delivering it through door to door canvassing or phones, it’s not going to work. And two, unless you really, really go overboard. None of these methods, none of these contact methods, are duplicative. They’re all additive, by which I mean, if I call you canvas, you mail you and send you digital ads.

It keeps on increasing your likelihood of voting, it takes a really long time before you get to a point of diminishing returns when you’re mobilizing people to vote. So I know everybody likes to say, oh, there’s too much repetition. People are talking to voters too many times.

The truth is, repetition is golden. You can never underestimate how many people pay no attention to politics whatsoever, and so you want to reach them as many times as possible.

Well, tell us, how do people give to your organization? How do they get involved, how they volunteer, and what can they do before this election to help out?

Well, thank you. Thank you for asking you they can go to environmental voter.org environmental voter.org, it is the easiest thing in the world to sign up to volunteer. I can brag about this because I have nothing to do with it. It’s our amazing organizing team that has set this up.

You go to our website, go to the “Get Involved” tab, and you can see all of the options that you can sign up for. You click on one, you sign up, you’ll get emailed the Zoom link, and you can sign up for phone banking or door to door canvassing. It’s too late to do post carding now, because we’re so close to the election and it’s so easy.

You’ll show up to a Zoom meeting. You’ll get trained by a volunteer leader. They will hold your hand until you’re ready to go, and then you’ll be able to use proven scripts to turn out these voters. And don’t worry, the voters won’t see your phone. You’ll be using our phone number, and you will make a difference. And at the end of it, we will report back to you how many voters were contacted during that phone bank, and ultimately, will report back to you the increase in turnout.

And then, as far as supporting us, you can also make a donation on our website, environmental voter.org We can efficiently spend donations and even buy new digital ads all the way up to the day before election day.

Okay, well, you guys heard it here on A Climate Change and please visit environmentalvoter.org That’s environmentalvoter.org and donate, volunteer. It’s seems like a great organization.

Really wonderful to have you on the program. Nathaniel, and love the work that you’re doing. It sounds brilliant, and wish others would get involved with this, because it seems like it’s a good strategy to move the needle.

Well, thank you, Matt. I really, really appreciate you saying that, and thanks for having me.

And that was Nathaniel Stinnett, if you want to learn more about the environmental voter project and how you can get involved. Visit environmental voter.org to learn more about our work at a climate change and how you can help us reach our goal planting 30,000 trees in the Amazon this year.

Visit aclimatechange.com. Don’t forget to subscribe to our podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. If you like this episode, please share it with a friend. See you next time.