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"The polls we're seeing unfortunately tell the same story we're hearing from the 900,000 young swing state voters we've contacted in the past two months," said one organizer.
The youth-led climate action group Sunrise Movement said Wednesday that the latest polling numbers in swing states—showing Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump leading Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in all but one—demonstrate what they've been hearing in their massive voter mobilization push, and reiterated their demand that Harris course-correct on key issues.
"The polls we're seeing unfortunately tell the same story we're hearing from the 900,000 young swing state voters we've contacted in the past two months," said Stevie O'Hanlon, communications director for Sunrise. "VP Harris is losing ground with young people. To win this election, VP Harris must change course. The campaign urgently needs to work to energize and turn out millions of young voters."
The RealClearPolitics polling average on Wednesday showed Trump pulling ahead in every swing state except Wisconsin, where Harris has 48.3% support compared to Trump's 48%.
Trump is beating Harris by one percentage point in Michigan—the state with the largest share of Arab American voters, where campaigners have been warning for months that Harris' support for continued arms sales to Israel amid its assault on Gaza and Lebanon is a political liability. In Arizona, he is winning by 1.1 points, and in North Carolina by 1.2 points.
"We can look at the math. In every swing state, the number of young voters dwarfs the anticipated margins of victory," said O'Hanlon. "In my home state of Pennsylvania, [President] Joe Biden won the state by 80,000 votes in 2020. More than 80,000 people turn 18 in Pennsylvania and become newly eligible voters each year."
Sunrise has been contacting young voters in swing states since Harris was officially nominated to replace Biden as the Democratic candidate, and in mid-September, the group issued a warning about what they were hearing from voters.
"People are fired up and getting engaged with the election, but there is a sizable number of young people who don't want to get out the vote for Kamala Harris until she backs an arms embargo and puts forward a real climate plan," said Noah Foley-Beining, an organizer with the group, at the time.
A month later, said O'Hanlon, Harris appears to be "splitting hairs for a small fraction of the undecided middle-aged, white, conservative voter base" instead of "electrifying the Democratic base by talking about how she will take on big corporations, tackle the climate crisis, and end U.S. military support for Israel's assault on Gaza."
"VP Harris is losing ground with young people... The campaign urgently needs to work to energize and turn out millions of young voters."
Harris has won applause from progressives for speaking frankly and unequivocally about her support for abortion rights and for unveiling economic justice proposals like a federal ban on food industry price gouging and an expansion of Medicare to cover home healthcare, vision, and hearing care.
But as Israel has expanded its U.S.-backed military operations to Lebanon—killing more than 2,000 people—and cut off northern Gaza from humanitarian aid in what advocates warned appeared to be an ethnic cleansing campaign, the Harris campaign has refused to support an arms embargo on the Middle Eastern country.
Harris has also boasted about the Biden administration's expansion of oil production and her support for fracking.
In an op-ed at Common Dreams on Wednesday, Mitch Jones, managing director of policy and litigation for Food and Water Watch, wrote that the "conventional wisdom" among pundits that politicians must embrace fossil fuels is misinformed, as evidenced by polling in swing states including Pennsylvania.
"A recent survey from the Ohio River Valley Institute showed that 74% of Pennsylvanians support stricter regulations on fracking due to concern about health risks, while 90% or more want expanded setbacks from schools and hospitals, stronger air monitoring, and more rigorous regulation on transportation of fracking waste. Ignoring these concerns and instead framing fracking as a virtue makes little political sense in the Keystone State," wrote Jones.
"Further, in Pennsylvania and beyond, Harris needs a groundswell of support from young and progressive voters—people most likely to care deeply about climate change and preventing it," Jones added. "In a recent survey of young people in swing states from the Environmental Voter Project, 40% said that 'a candidate must prioritize "addressing climate change" or else it is a "deal breaker."' More significantly, 16% said they would definitely not support a candidate that talks about 'increasing U.S. use of fossil fuels like oil, gas, and coal,' yet this is exactly what Harris has been bragging about. This election will be decided at the margins, and these are the type of hesitant voters we need to be motivated and engaged to put Harris over the line."
With just 20 days left until Election Day, said O'Hanlon, Sunrise Movement campaigners are "giving everything we've got to contact millions of people and turn out young voters to elect Harris."
"What we're asking," O'Hanlon said, "is that the Harris campaign help us do that."
Trump represents an existential threat and it remains imperative that Kamala Harris win this election. But to do that, she would be well-advised to stop embracing fracking and return to her roots of confronting the coal, oil, and gas companies head-on.
The impacts of climate change are all around us—hurricanes battering Florida and Appalachia, extreme heat in October baking the West, and a continual stream of new temperature records. It’s pretty clear what needs to happen. We need to rapidly move away from fossil fuels. But for some reason, rather than taking on the fossil fuel companies driving the climate crisis, Vice President Harris’s team has determined that it's good politics to tout fracking and increased oil and gas production. This is not a winning approach, and it could actually cost Harris an election we desperately need her to win.
Embracing fracking and fossil fuel production is bad politics in addition to bad policy. D.C. conventional wisdom holds that in order to win Pennsylvania, candidates need to embrace fracking—but like much of D.C. conventional wisdom, this is wrong. Food & Water Action has worked on the ground in Pennsylvania for years. We’ve seen up close the dark underside of fracking - polluted water and air, cancer, and other social ills. Working with impacted communities, we have passed dozens of local measures restricting the practice in the state. Pennsylvanians don’t love fracking. In fact, they want to see it reined in rather than further unleashed.
The science is clear: We need to leave the vast majority of fossil fuels in the ground. No amount of investment in renewable energy by itself will avert worsening climate change as long as we are simultaneously continuing to increase fossil fuel production.
Polling reflects this deep concern. A recent survey from the Ohio River Valley Institute showed that 74% of Pennsylvanians support stricter regulations on fracking due to concern about health risks, while 90% or more want expanded setbacks from schools and hospitals, stronger air monitoring, and more rigorous regulation on transportation of fracking waste. Ignoring these concerns and instead framing fracking as a virtue makes little political sense in the Keystone state.
Further, in Pennsylvania and beyond, Harris needs a groundswell of support from young and progressive voters—people most likely to care deeply about climate change and preventing it. In a recent survey of young people in swing states from the Environmental Voter Project, 40% said that “a candidate must prioritize ‘addressing climate change’ or else it is a ‘deal breaker.’” More significantly, 16% said they would definitely not support a candidate that talks about “increasing U.S. use of fossil fuels like oil, gas, and coal,” yet this is exactly what Harris has been bragging about. This election will be decided at the margins, and these are the type of hesitant voters we need to be motivated and engaged to put Harris over the line..
When she ran for president in 2019, Harris advocated for a much different agenda. She was one of several major candidates to call for an outright ban on fracking, she embraced a Green New Deal, and she championed a quick transition to a clean energy economy. These are the policies that would give her a great platform to address the climate crisis and talk about building a new energy economy based on good, unionized clean energy jobs.
They also have the advantage of being in line with what scientists are telling us is necessary to avert worse and escalating climate chaos. The science is clear: We need to leave the vast majority of fossil fuels in the ground. No amount of investment in renewable energy by itself will avert worsening climate change as long as we are simultaneously continuing to increase fossil fuel production.
Based on her prior statements and record (she went after fossil fuel companies as California attorney general) Harris knows this. And, she has an opportunity to draw a stark contrast with Donald Trump, whose record is the epitome of climate denial and fossil fuel industry pandering. But now, if she is elected, Harris will face tremendous pressure to work with the fossil fuel industry and support its pet projects. It will be up to all of us to provide a loud and clear message from day one that this approach is unacceptable.
The stakes in this election could not be higher. Trump’s agenda poses a severe threat to our environment and our climate, as well as our democracy. It is imperative that Kamala Harris wins this election. But to do that, she would be well-advised to stop embracing fracking and fossil fuels, and return to her roots of confronting the oil and gas industry head-on. A large and powerful movement is ready to back her if she does, or hold her accountable if she doesn’t.
"Every dollar invested in unnecessary, harmful, and expensive LNG infrastructure costs us double—first, by our failure to invest instead in secure, abundant, and cheap renewable energies, and second, by locking in higher greenhouse gas emissions."
With Climate Week underway in New York City, 106 lawmakers from the United States and around the world on Monday urged the Biden administration to reject new liquefied natural gas export permits, stressing that they "are not in the U.S. public interest or necessary for the national or energy security of our allies."
Rejecting new permits, they wrote, "will help protect communities from the environmental harm that fossil gas causes; promote global energy security and encourage investment and trade in clean energy technologies; and help our nations satisfy both national and global climate commitments, including those made at the 2023 U.N. climate change conference COP28 in Dubai."
The letter to U.S. President Joe Biden and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm was led by Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Congresswoman Nanette Barragán (D-Calif.), and Lisa Badum, a Greens member of Germany's Bundestag. Along with other American and German lawmakers, it's signed by members of the European Parliament and legislatures in over a dozen other countries.
"Curtailing U.S. LNG export activity will send a strong global signal in favor of new investments in renewable energy."
They explained that in January, the Biden administration paused new export authorizations for liquefied natural gas (LNG) to countries that don't have free trade agreements with the United States, and although a recent federal court ruling blocked the policy, "that misguided decision does not force any immediate export project approvals, prevent the Department of Energy (DOE) from updating its environmental and economic analyses, or impact the factors that DOE already considers in its application review process."
"Far from being a clean 'bridge' fuel, LNG causes significant environmental harm," the lawmakers declared, highlighting the impacts of gas on not only the global climate but also the health of people exposed to nearby hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, operations and infrastructure such as processing plants, import facilities, export terminals, and pipelines.
"In addition to the environmental and health benefits, limiting U.S. LNG exports will actually support global energy security, not jeopardize it," they wrote. "Curtailing U.S. LNG export activity will send a strong global signal in favor of new investments in renewable energy, discouraging overinvestment in a volatile and high-priced fossil fuel."
The letter notes that the United States is "the world's largest exporter of LNG" and warns that such exports "affect the world's regions in various ways, but uniformly, they are negative," with sections on Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Europe.
"Every dollar invested in unnecessary, harmful, and expensive LNG infrastructure costs us double—first, by our failure to invest instead in secure, abundant, and cheap renewable energies, and second, by locking in higher greenhouse gas emissions, with attendant future climate damage," the letter emphasizes. "Continued reliance on LNG means more harm to frontline communities and the environment from extracting, transporting, and shipping fossil gas around the world."
The lawmakers' letter follows one that a coalition of more than 250 climate, environmental, and frontline groups sent to Biden and Granholm earlier this month—during the warmest summer on record and what is on track to be the hottest year on record.
"We are on the verge of seeing global average temperatures exceed 1.5°C warming above preindustrial temperatures, failing the internationally agreed upon goal of the Paris agreement and crossing the threshold upon which ever more catastrophic effects of climate change begin," the green groups wrote. "The only way world leaders can avoid this moral and political failure is to work together to end fossil fuel production."