Nathaniel Stinnett from the Environmental Voter Project was the featured speaker at the February 21st FDTC meeting. The Environmental Voter Project (EVP) identifies millions of non-voting environmentalists and turns them into consistent voters. They estimate that over 8 million environmentalists did not vote in the 2020 presidential election and over 13 million skipped the 2022 midterms. EVP is a nonpartisan nonprofit focused on a simple, high-leverage solution to this problem: with a 7-year track record of success, we are accurately identifying these non-voting environmentalists and efficiently converting them into a critical mass of consistent voters that will soon be too big for politicians to ignore. There are 13M Environmentalists that don’t vote in national elections. These are all registered voters. EVP has helped turn 1.4 M non-voting and seldom-voting environmentalists into consistent super-voters.
Why does EVP do it? When environmentalists don’t vote, politicians don’t listen. Nothing motivates a politician more than the prospect of winning or losing an election, so if we want true environmental and climate leadership, we must flood the electorate and make it impossible for politicians to run for office without leading on the environment. This is our cycle: More environmentalists vote in every election -> Politicians shift to focus on environmental voters -> Pro climate legislation passes. EVP is not in the mind changing business. They are in the behavior changing business. They are non-partisan and just want you to vote. The key data that candidates focus on is likely voters from public records. Likely voters are consistent voters. Many environmentalists are non-voters. When they become likely/consistent voters, politicians will add their concerns to their top 3 priorities.
How do they do it? We take a long-term, evidence-based approach to building the power of the environmental electorate.
1. Identification: Leveraging data analytics and predictive modeling, we identify millions of registered-to-vote environmentalists by name and street address. Then, we use public voter files to narrow our focus to only those environmentalists who typically don’t vote and are thus ignored by most political campaigns.
2. Mobilization: Using proven voter-turnout messaging built on the latest behavioral science, we then canvass, call, text, mail, and send digital ads to these target environmentalists before every election—local, state, and federal. Using randomized controlled trials, we always test the performance of our messages and optimize each communication for it’s target audience.
3. Habit reinforcement: Voting is a “sticky” habit: once someone votes for the first time, they’re much more likely to vote again in future elections. Therefore, we treat every election—local, state, and federal—as a high-leverage opportunity to turn non-voters into voters. You can’t change someone’s voting behavior if you only talk to them every 2 or 4 years, so we work year-round in every election, regularly checking public voter files and following up with our voters until they become consistent super voters.
4. Changing the electorate: Nothing motivates a politician more than the prospect of winning or losing an election. EVP’s ultimate goal is to flood the electorate with so many environmental voters that politicians will have no choice but to appeal to environmental voters and our priorities.
Examples of EVP effectiveness. How do you measure Election Specific Impacts? They focus on a specific state in a national election. 15% of that group is held out as a control group. The remaining 85% gets treatment via canvassing, phone banking and post card mailings. That group is analyzed for who actually voted not who they voted for. In the past 3 years EVP has influenced a 1-5% increase in going to the polls in 16 states. In the swing state of Arizona, EVP identified 229K environmentalist voters. The margin in the 2020 election was approximately 11K votes. It is obvious that their analysis and methodology will be a powerful tool to increase the blue vote in 2024.