Each month, LCV shares five stories about the impact of our work. This month, we’re focusing on our movement’s efforts in the 2024 elections, the federal and state races we helped win for pro-environment, pro-democracy champions, and the volunteer organizers who power our movement — and where we go from here.

This Month’s Stories

1. Elections: What We Did and What Comes Next

The results of this election will put our movement on defense at the federal level. Nonetheless, we are extremely proud of the work that LCV Victory Fund, LCV Action Fund, and our state affiliates did, and we’re incredibly grateful for our many supporters, organizers, and partners.

While the economic and cultural factors motivating voters in the presidential election were ultimately too big to overcome — and we will be delving deep into the data to learn lessons from this race in the months ahead — our collective efforts succeeded in electing many climate and democracy champions up and down the ballot (see stories 2-4 below).

Together, we reached more voters than ever before, and innovated new strategies and tactics that we can refine for future election cycles. Here are some highlights of what your support allowed us to do:

• Engage voters. In 14 states and 41 federal races, LCV Victory Fund and affiliated entities reached voters at their homes, on the airwaves, and on their screens by knocking on more than 3.6 million doors, sending nearly 6 million pieces of mail, making over 2.2 million phone calls, and serving TV, cable, and digital ads to tens of millions of voters. At the state and local level, our Conservation Voters Movement state affiliates invested in efforts to engage voters in 590 races across 30 states.
• Mobilize members as volunteers. LCV Action Fund and state affiliates collectively endorsed nearly 1,800 candidates, from town councils to the White House. LCV broke records for our GreenRoots member mobilization programs, engaging 10,000 LCV members to complete 25,000 volunteer shifts to help elect pro-environment candidates. Volunteers canvassed, phonebanked, and helped voters make plans to vote.
• Raise direct support for candidates. Our movement supported over 300 federal, state, and local candidates through GiveGreen, a project of LCV Victory Fund and NRDC Action Votes, and engaged donors across the country to build collective power by donating a record-breaking $58.8 million directly to climate champions.
• Launch innovations. We tested and rolled out new tactics to make our voter outreach work even more powerful and seamless. These include:
  • Piloting large-scale paid relational organizing to engage hard-to-reach voters, which resulted in voters having more than 35,000 peer-to-peer conversations with family, friends, and neighbors.
  • Launching our first-ever Climate Candidate Guide for voters, a new, user-friendly tool that lets voters enter their address to find endorsed pro-environment candidates up and down their specific ballot.
  • Expanding our best-in-class canvass operation for the first time ever to U.S. House races, based on results from a successful pilot project we ran in the NY-03 special election earlier this year. In total, we knocked on 1.3 million doors in 13 U.S. House districts.
  • Working with diverse content creators and social media influencers who regularly reach millions of people as a new way to reach young people and other voters.

Read the memos from LCV Victory Fund and LCV Action Fund summarizing this work, along with LCV’s statement on the 2024 election results. 

In the months and years ahead, LCV will continue to hold leaders accountable to defend and advance environmental progress. And we will remain a trusted and vital source of information about climate and environmental issues for the public, among whom clean energy remains extremely popular.

This point was underscored during a post-election press conference held by LCV, Climate Power, EDF Action, NRDC Action Fund, NextGen America, and Sierra Club Political Committee on November 7. LCV President Gene Karpinski spoke about how we and our state affiliates will work to defend clean energy progress at the federal level and expand our efforts to win new progress in the states.

The fight for our climate and democracy continues. Watch the post-election press conference and learn what comes next for our movement:

2. Electing Pro-Climate Senate and House Members in Presidential Battleground States

Despite Trump’s victory, our movement helped deliver important wins for climate and clean energy allies across the country, including in states where Trump won.

Pro-climate U.S. Senate candidates won extremely tight races in the presidential battleground states of Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin. Many of these champions ran on their records of boosting clean energy, creating jobs, lowering costs, and protecting our air and water.

Highlights include:

These are only some of the climate champions who won up and down the ballot across the country, demonstrating that leaning into environmental and clean energy issues is both good policy and good politics.

Read more in this recent article in The Hill on how and where pro-climate candidates won tight races in battleground states. View more state-specific wins here.  

3. New Champions Headed to Congress

Dozens of new climate champions will be heading to Congress in January 2025, including six new members of the U.S. Senate — five of whom have already been strong pro-environment allies as U.S. representatives — and at least 30 new members of the U.S. House.

LCV’s 2024 New Member Guide summarizes the backgrounds and environmental positions of newly elected federal candidates who were endorsed and/or financially supported by LCV Action Fund and/or state LCV partners. As in past election cycles, LCV Action Fund supported federal candidates who demonstrated a commitment to leading on climate change, promoting clean energy, fighting for environmental justice and the health of our communities, defending our democracy, and protecting our air, water, land, and ecosystems.

LCV Action Fund is committed to endorsing candidates who are reflective and representative of diverse communities and identities across the country. This year’s new members include several who are historic “firsts” for their communities. They include:

We are thrilled to have helped elect these and other new environmental champions to the U.S. House and Senate. LCV looks forward to working with them and with many environmental champion incumbents who are returning to Congress in 2025.

View or download the full 2024 New Member Guide PDF in English or Spanish. A complete list of LCV Action Fund endorsements, including those of incumbents, is available here. 

4. State and Local Victories

At the state and local levels, our movement won critical election victories. These victories will take on even more importance in the months and years ahead, as LCV and our 30+ state affiliates in the Conservation Voters Movement redouble our efforts to  push states across the U.S. to accelerate progress on climate, clean energy, environmental justice, and democracy.

One important victory came in Washington state, where voters defeated one of the worst attacks on climate action in the country. The state strongly rejected an effort to roll back its ambitious climate plans, as voters rejected Initiative 2117. 62% of voters stopped efforts to dismantle the state’s carbon market, which was established under the 2021 Climate Commitment Act and has generated over $2.15 billion for green projects, such as electric vehicle rebates, air quality initiatives, and clean energy infrastructure.

Initiative 2117 was nominated by Washington Conservation Action Votes as an addition to LCV Victory Fund’s 2024 Dirty Dozen in the States, which typically includes 12 of the worst candidates in the nation at the state and local level each election cycle. The addition marked the first time a ballot initiative has ever appeared on this list, and it was so important that it brought the Dirty Dozen in the States to a baker’s dozen of 13 nominees.

Here are more highlights of where our state affiliates invested, worked, and won in 2024:

• California voters passed Proposition 4, authorizing a $10 billion climate bond to address the impacts of climate change. The bond will fund projects in water conservation, wildfire resilience, coastal protection, and renewable energy, with at least 40% allocated to vulnerable and disadvantaged communities.
• New pro-environment statewide leaders won across the board in Washington. By wide margins, Washington voters elected pro-environmental leaders for every major statewide position, including governor, state attorney general, and public lands commissioner.
• Two Michigan LCV-endorsed justices won seats on the Michigan Supreme Court. Incumbent Justice Kyra Bolden will hold her seat, and incumbent Kimberly Thomas will join the state Supreme Court, after both received over 60% of the vote. These victories will grow the Court’s 4-3 pro-environmental majority to 5-2.
• North Carolina will have an environmental champion governor and new attorney general. The North Carolina League of Conservation Voters ran its largest electoral campaign through its independent expenditure PAC, the Conservation Votes PAC, to elect Josh Stein as governor. Additionally, NCLCV’s coordinated PAC, Conservation PAC, endorsed many successful candidates, including Jeff Jackson, who will be the state’s next attorney general. They were also able to break the anti-environment supermajority in the state legislature, protecting the governor’s ability to veto bad legislation.
• Pennsylvania held a pro-environment majority in the state House. Pro-environment lawmakers retained control of the state House, maintaining their one-seat majority in the face of strong challenges. The majority will allow Pennsylvania’s state legislature to continue to play a major role in fighting against climate change and protecting the state’s clean air, water, and open spaces.
• Ohio voters approved funds for public transit and infrastructure. The Ohio Environmental Council (OEC) Action Fund celebrated the successful approval of Issue 47, the LinkUS transit initiative, which is a major victory for sustainable transportation in Central Ohio. LinkUS will expand sidewalks, greenways, and public transit services across the region.

5. Meet Some of Our Grassroots Volunteers

This cycle, LCV made our largest investment ever in our GreenRoots member mobilization program across 14 states, as well as a national organizing team. GreenRoots has mobilized LCV members to volunteer on behalf of LCV Action Fund-endorsed candidates in every election since 2012.

Over 75 organizing staff recruited 10,000 LCV members as volunteers, who completed 25,000 volunteer shifts on behalf of Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign and 27 candidate campaigns for Congress. We’re incredibly grateful for the efforts of all LCV’s GreenRoots organizers this election cycle who helped elect climate and democracy candidates in close races across the country, from Arizona to Wisconsin.

LCV’s blog recently featured interviews and profiles of three young GreenRoots organizers, who talked about what inspires them and why they do this work:

Achol: Working to Ensure Everyone’s Voices are Heard

Achol, an organizer and healthcare worker based in Phoenix, Arizona, gets her commitment to environmental and social justice from a sense of community and responsibility to make sure everyone’s voices are heard, not just the rich and powerful. Achol’s family immigrated to Buffalo, New York, when Achol was five years old, after fleeing the civil war in Sudan. Her experience growing up in Buffalo, one of the nation’s most impoverished cities, with a large immigrant and refugee population, and where the family faced increased exposure to pollution and a lack of access to greenspace, led her to become involved in environmental justice advocacy.

Magali: The Power of One Person

Magali, a full-time organizer with LCV’s GreenRoots program in Phoenix, worked to mobilize LCV members to knock on doors, make phone calls, and connect with voters in support of pro-environment candidates up and down the ballot. She is a first-generation immigrant who came to the U.S. when she was two years old. Despite not being able to vote herself, Magali is passionate and dedicated to working to amplify the voices of Arizonans and empower her community.

Kelsey: From Climate Denial to Climate Activism

Kelsey (she/they), an artist and organizer based in Lansing, Michigan, is leading the charge for a brighter future with compassion, curiosity, and love. Kelsey wasn’t always a climate activist. In fact, she wasn’t even always sure that human-made climate change was real. Kelsey shares her perspective having been raised in a conservative, Christian household and how this informs her ability to connect with people from all backgrounds and walks of life. With their activism, Kelsey aims to educate, find common ground, and build bridges between people who may disagree.