LCV Victory Fund | ClimateVote22

Climate & Democracy:
On The Line in 2022

This is a moment of great consequence. 

We’re running out of time to address the climate crisis. But while voters are demanding action on climate and environmental justice from our elected leaders, anti-democracy interests are making it harder for voters’ voices to be heard by enacting laws that suppress voting rights and subvert our core election systems.

We need leaders who will take bold, swift action on climate, and who are committed to defending and strengthening our democracy. Will you join us in electing them?

Climate & Democracy:
On The Line in 2022

This is a moment of great consequence. 

We’re running out of time to address the climate crisis. But while voters are demanding action on climate and environmental justice from our elected leaders, anti-democracy interests are making it harder for voters’ voices to be heard by enacting laws that suppress voting rights and subvert our core election systems.

We need leaders who will take bold, swift action on climate, and who are committed to defending and strengthening our democracy. Will you join us in electing them?

LCV Victory Fund is laser-focused on ensuring that we elect and protect pro-climate, pro-democracy champions at all levels of government.

This year, climate and democracy champions on the ballot must overcome:

  • Historical election trends: the president’s party typically losses seats in midterm elections.
  • Targeted voting restrictions that are making it harder for the diverse coalition of voters who helped power the Biden-Harris ticket to victory in 2020 to access the ballot.
  • False narratives pushed by right-wing politicians and their allies that attempt to persuade voters to support candidates who will undermine our climate future and subvert our democracy.

To overcome these challenges, LCV Victory Fund will run our largest field effort ever to boost voter turnout among voters who care deeply about climate change and the environment. Through our ClimateVote22 campaign, we’ll work to help elect leaders who support ambitious policies that address climate change and environmental justice on the scale that science and justice demand, and who will defend and expand voting rights to ensure that voters decide elections.

To succeed, we need to protect and elect pro-climate & pro-democracy:

MAJORITY IN THE U.S. SENATE

We will be involved in critical, competitive races where we can either protect allies in the Senate or elect new champions to secure a true pro-environment, pro-democracy majority.

GOVERNORS AT THE STATE LEVEL

We will support our states affiliates’ work to defend governors who our movement helped elect in 2018  — and who’ve made big clean energy gains — and to elect new champions.

CHAMPIONS IN THE U.S. HOUSE

We will work hard to protect as many incumbent House champions as possible and help elect new champions in races where our involvement can make the difference.

How We Win in 2022

While the political landscape of 2022 will continue to evolve, we have already identified a few broad imperatives that our work must strategically address, including the need to:

  • Hold and expand the racially diverse Biden-Harris coalition
  • Boost motivation and turnout to overcome targeted voting restrictions
  • Localize messaging, targeting, and partnerships

Here are the tactics that will lead to success:

STRATEGICALLY FOCUSING RESOURCES

We run independent campaigns in key states and districts where our issues and involvement can make the difference to elect a pro-environment candidate or defeat an anti-environment opponent.  We prioritize states where our efforts can simultaneously impact Senate, House, and governors’ seats.

IDENTIFYING VOTERS AND MESSAGES

We use cutting-edge research to identify discrete universes of voters who can be moved on our issues and develop effective messaging. In 2020, we launched a program to reach and persuade 1.58 million specific voters in battleground states — and follow-up analysis found that our program increased the Democratic vote margin by 5.6 percentage points among these voters on Election Day. 

ENGAGING EARLY AND AGGRESSIVELY

In many races, narratives about candidates form months before Election Day. We invest early in TV and digital communications to define candidates and respond to attacks.  We use research to identify key voters and create effective persuasion and mobilization plans. 

MOTIVATION AND MOBILIZATION

Our unique, best-in-class canvassing programs—a mix of motivation and turnout efforts with particular focus on communities of color—have helped deliver decisive margins in close races for the last decade. We have significant expertise running vote-by-mail and early voting programs, including communicating directly with voters about options for voting in their states. 

LEVERAGING OUR NETWORK OF STATE AFFILIATES

We work with our 30+ state affiliates to impact multiple races up and down the ballot, invest early to frame the terms of the race, and continually analyze the state of play to adjust resources or seize opportunities.

EXPANDING PARTNERSHIPS

LCV Victory Fund is a trusted partner to other leading independent, progressive, and labor groups working to elect candidates. We work closely with allies so that our efforts complement, rather than duplicate, each other and so that voters hear from the messenger that they are most likely to connect with.

Our Impact

LCV Victory Fund’s independent campaigns get results.

Thanks to partners like you, in 2017-2018, LCV Victory Fund won 84% of the races we invested in, including 23 of 25 House races. We also helped elect 10 new pro-environment governors and 294 state legislators. In 2019-2020, we succeeded in delivering battleground states to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, played a vital role in electing five new pro-climate, pro-democracy senators, and helped flip the U.S. Senate to pro-environment, pro-justice leadership. We also helped state affiliates win critical state and local races in places like Arizona, Michigan, Nebraska, and New Mexico.

Our Impact

LCV Victory Fund’s independent campaigns get results.

Thanks to partners like you, in 2017-2018, LCV Victory Fund won 84% of the races we invested in, including 23 of 25 House races. We also helped elect 10 new pro-environment governors and 294 state legislators. In 2019-2020, we succeeded in delivering battleground states to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, played a vital role in electing five new pro-climate, pro-democracy senators, and helped flip the U.S. Senate to pro-environment, pro-justice leadership. We also helped state affiliates win critical state and local races in places like Arizona, Michigan, Nebraska, and New Mexico.

Your Help Is Needed Now

Our movement could not have won these victories without the early investment of partners like you. Of all the strategies for how we will win in 2022, the most important is early investment. Securing early resources has the best, most exponential effect on the scope and depth of the canvassing and communications we can run. It allows us to:

  • Invest in research and polling
  • Define our target audiences
  • Test effective climate-focused messaging
  • Hire and train canvassers
  • Develop substantive, long-term partnerships
  • Ultimately, turn out the most voters! 

This is a moment of great consequence. We cannot wait any longer to address the “code red” existential emergency that is the climate crisis. Nor can we allow our democracy to be chipped away bill by bill until election outcomes do not reflect the will of the people. We need leaders who will do much more, and faster, to build a safe, healthy, and just future for all. 

Will you join us in electing them?

Donate now to help us win in 2022.

To learn more about our in-depth plan to win in 2022, please check out our 2022 political plan or contact Rowel Leung at rleung@lcv.org.