In 2020, Donald Trump lost Georgia to Joe Biden by 11,779 votes out of nearly 5 million cast in the state, one of the closest races in that election.
Since that time, the Peach State has seen an increase in extreme heat days, rising sea levels and frost damage to crops. And the electorate has grown more concerned about climate change — with 76% of registered voters now supporting congressional action on climate.
This time around, with voters in the battleground state closely divided between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, climate activists are determined to make sure that their concerns help swing the election to Harris, whose policies are seen as more climate-friendly than those of the former president.
Almost half a million voters in Georgia who have expressed concerns about climate change but have not voted in the last two election cycles are now being targeted by the Environmental Voter Project. The overwhelming majority of the voters in this group (88%) are between the ages of 18 and 34 and almost half are Black.
Of all the states, “Georgia has the largest number of low-propensity climate voters,” said Nathanie Stinnett, director and founder of EVP, which is nonpartisan but because of its climate focus tends to mobilize more Democratic voters. The group has been targeting young voters in the state with door-to-door canvassing, phone calls, direct mail and social media.
According to EVP’s polling, 40% of young voters in five battleground states including Georgia will only support candidates who prioritize climate change — it’s a “deal breaker” for them. And an additional 40% of them said they’d prefer candidates who make it a priority to address climate change.
“Young voters are seeing the increases in extreme weather events in Georgia and their rising power bills driven in large part by fossil fuel costs, and noting the need for greater investment in climate technology and solar,” said Marqus Cole, the director of church engagement and outreach for the Evangelical Environmental Network and a former political candidate.
Coupled with the entrance of Harris into the presidential race in late July, mobilizing climate-focused voters could be making a difference. Before the first debate in June, Trump was leading President Biden — then the presumed Democratic nominee — by five points in Georgia. Now he’s leading Harris by just 2.5 points, which is within the margin of error and a statistical tie.
Black voters in that 18-34 demographic have shifted eight points toward Harris, said Connie Di Cicco, the political director of Georgia Conservation Voters, which tries to mobilize votes for climate-friendly candidates. “That’s massive, and young Black voters who identify climate change as a priority are much more likely to vote than others in that demographic who don’t identify it as a priority.”
Groups like Black Voters Matter have been focusing on turning out young voters in Georgia and other states, visiting dozens of college campuses and registering thousands of students so far this year. Climate is a major issue for those students, said Fenika Miller, national field co-director of Black Voters Matter. From urban areas like Atlanta, where students are experiencing water quality issues and flooding, to Paine College, “where air quality is an issue,” she said, “they are learning how climate and environmental justice affect their everyday quality of life and their own pocketbooks and connecting that back to the ballot, and who has political power.”
Georgia is not a fossil-fuel producing state, so its energy and climate debates revolve less around the local economy and jobs and more around the affordability and reliability of electricity. Recently, climate activists lost two big battles that revolve around the state’s biggest utility, Georgia Power, which only gets about a tenth of its power from renewable sources, such as solar, biomass and hydroelectric. Lawmakers extended the terms of members of the utility’s regulator, the Public Service Commission, thwarting efforts to elect a slate of clean-energy supporters. And a bill to pause tax credits for data centers, which put such a strain on the state’s energy grid that the commission had to approve new gas-fired power plants, driving up rates for residents in the process, was vetoed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp.
“You think there’d be more outrage and interest over climate and the politics of it, the connection between policies and climate change,” said Larry Heiman, vice chair of the Dunwoody Sustainability Committee in the Atlanta suburb of Dunwoody.
Recently, Georgia Power’s plan to let coal ash remain in the groundwater at some of its plants was rejected by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, highlighting an environmental justice issue. One of the top coal ash-generating states, Georgia releases more than 6 million tons of the ash, which causes air and water pollution. And low-income residents and people of color are more likely to live in neighborhoods close to the state’s coal-burning plants.
“It’s pretty clear to me that climate change amplifies other existing economic and social vulnerabilities,” said Patricia Yager of the Georgia Initiative for Climate and Society. “But I haven’t seen climate be the first to come to mind when talking to folks about their central concerns about their quality of life. They do talk about health concerns, which can be amplified by heat or smog. If I talk with them about their energy bills, we do find high energy burdens in some of the hardest-hit urban neighborhoods.”
The climate focus has been merged with religious faith among some voters in the heavily Southern Baptist region.
Cole, the church engagement director, notes the heavy support among registered voters (75%) for clean-energy projects, many of which have been recently funded through federal programs such as the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s signature climate legislation. The state leads the country in the number of clean-energy projects that have been launched since the IRA’s passage in 2022 with more than $15 billion invested in 28 projects, creating 15,723 jobs.
Cole is hopeful that the tide is turning, pointing to the fact that both Kemp and Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff have been vying to take credit for the many renewable energy projects in the state. Some projects, including a QCells facility outside of Dalton that the company claims is the largest solar panel manufacturing plant in the Western Hemisphere, have won praise from hard-core conservatives like Georgia’s Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
“The Christian value of ‘loving your neighbor’ could be an animating force for changing the narrative in the state from a divisive political one of ‘turning purple’ to a unifying values-based vision for ‘transitioning to green,’” emphasized Cole.