How Public Lands and Outdoor Issues Won in 2020
Over the past several election cycles, the Center for Western Priorities’ Winning the West project has documented public land conservation as a winning campaign issue, due to a growing bipartisan number of Westerners who vote to keep the West’s public lands clean, protected, and accessible. With an outdoor voting bloc whose connection to the outdoors has only heightened during the COVID-19 pandemic, public lands issues played an even more decisive role in the outcome of close Mountain West races in the 2020 election cycle.
Of the 21 races we tracked throughout this election, 19 featured significant pro-public lands advertising or messaging.
Indeed, the importance of outdoor issues has solidified to the extent that candidates with consistently pro-public lands positions have prevailed in most close elections in the Mountain West in recent elections.
Public Lands on the Ballot
Public lands — how they are managed, their importance to local economies, and the way they define life in the West — were often featured as a distinguishing issue by winning campaigns in 2020. Candidates used the mountains and outdoor spaces of the Mountain West to serve as the backdrop of numerous campaign ads and pro-public lands messages on social media. They openly discussed public lands to connect with the growing outdoor voting bloc.
Candidates campaigning on public lands issues became part of a narrative in local and national political media coverage.
By contrast, no candidates in competitive races took extreme anti-public lands positions, such as selling off national public lands to private interests or turning them over to state control.
Winning candidates also regularly rejected the Trump administration’s public lands agenda rolling back extensive wildlife, water and land protections in favor of expanding oil and gas development.
The races below represent a sample of competitive contests where the winning candidate used their public lands records and positions to connect with outdoor voters.
- CO Senate: Colorado’s U.S. Senate race, one of the most competitive in the nation, is a prime example of the importance of public lands and outdoor issues, which were regularly highlighted by both campaigns. Former Governor John Hickenlooper, the Democrat, won the race in part by touting his record as governor addressing climate change (setting the state on a path towards 100% renewable energy and curbing methane emissions), and by pointing to his “COnservation” Agenda, which opposes selling off federal lands and prioritizes the passage of the CORE Act, which would protect 400,000 acres of Colorado public lands. The Republican incumbent, Senator Cory Gardner tried to counter Hickenlooper’s record by showing his outdoor side, including releasing a video ad called “Get Outside” that showed he and his family getting ready for a day of recreating on public lands in order to call attention to his co-sponsorship of the recently passed Great American Outdoors Act. The effort to connect with outdoor voters was not enough, as Hickenlooper kept Gardner on the defensive over voting to confirm unpopular anti-public lands nominees to the Interior Department, voting against protecting clean air and water efforts and being the first Colorado senator in more than fifty years to not sponsor a single piece of wilderness designation legislation. Ultimately, Coloradans believed Hickenlooper to be the truest public lands champion, and elected him by a wide margin for what was expected to be a close race.
- MT Senate: Understanding their voters’ deep ties to the outdoors, public lands played an outsized role in the race for Montana’s U.S. Senate seat, as both candidates utilized appeals to outdoor issues throughout their campaigns. The incumbent, Republican Senator Steve Daines pointed to his co-sponsorship of the Great American Outdoors Act and support of bills that blocked mining on public lands near the north entrance to Yellowstone National Park and protected part of East Rosebud Creek. He also highlighted his help to pass legislation adding 67,000 acres of wilderness along the Rocky Mountain Front in northwest Montana. Daines’ opponent, Governor Steve Bullock made supporting public lands a centerpiece of his campaign message and in his criticisms of Daines. Bullock filed a successful lawsuit to remove William Perry Pendley — who previously advocated for the selling off of national public lands — from his position of acting director of the Bureau of Land Management and he criticized Daines’ support of Pendley. Bullock campaigned on his own record of creating major conservation easements that provide access to lands for hunting and fishing, preserving stream access, restoring funding for the Habitat Montana program, establishing Montana’s Office of Outdoor Recreation, and being a vocal advocate for the state’s outdoor economy and businesses. He also pointed to Daines’ record of voting to strip protections from hundreds of thousands of acres of public lands in Montana and casting the deciding vote to enable the sale, transfer, or exchange of lands in the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area, the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge, and other wilderness areas, wildlife refuges, national forests, and conservation lands in the U.S. Bullock’s outdoor-centric message was not enough to win in a year in which Montana voted consistently Republican, but it was enough to outperform the Democratic side of the presidential race by nearly five percentage points.
- Local Ballot Initiatives: Across the country, voters passed a variety of local measures and statewide ballot initiatives aimed at protecting the environment and wildlife, and funding public lands. In total, voters approved more than $3.7 billion in funding for parks, climate resiliency and public lands. Voter-passed initiatives include a new Colorado law requiring the reintroduction of gray wolves into the wild and a Montana law to use tax proceeds from legal marijuana purchases to provide $360 million for land and water conservation programs.
2 Million Outdoor Voters in the West
The intensity of support for public lands and outdoor issues has only solidified over the election cycles the Center for Western Priorities has conducted public opinion research and analyzed competitive races. Over time, we have identified a group of voters in the ideological middle who regularly participate in outdoor recreation — the “outdoor voting bloc.”
The outdoor voting bloc is composed of outdoor enthusiasts who care about keeping the West’s public lands clean, protected and accessible, and make their voices heard at the polls. Because the voters in these groups are also typically less partisan than traditional party preference breakdowns, they are exactly the people who candidates looking to win elections in Mountain West states like Arizona, Colorado, Montana, Nevada and New Mexico need to connect with.
We estimate the outdoor voting bloc to be 2 million voters strong across the Mountain West. From the results of our recent Winning the West 2020 poll, we identified that 26 percent of voters are made up of people who meet all of the following conditions:
- Identify as being active outdoors by participating in activities such as hiking, fishing, camping and recreational sports;
- Visit public lands 3–5+ times a year;
- Believe public lands are an important factor in deciding who to vote for; and
- Are “ticket splitters” who vote for candidates of different parties.
When overlaid with the voters in the swing-states of Arizona, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, and Nevada, who turned out to vote in the 2016 presidential election, the total comes to more than 2 million voters.
Voter Priorities on Public Lands and Outdoor Issues
We saw early evidence 2020 would be a big election year for public lands. Our 2020 Winning the West poll- — conducted in June 2020 in Arizona, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, and Nevada — found voters are more passionate than ever about the landscapes and lifestyles that make the West a special place to live.
81 percent of Western voters say national public lands, parks, and wildlife issues are important to them in deciding which candidate to vote for in Presidential and Congressional elections. The importance of public lands, parks and wildlife issues increased during the COVID-19 pandemic for 34 percent of voters, while remaining durable for the rest.
Public lands bring people together in the West at a time when most other issues of importance divide and polarize. Deeply valuing the access to parks and public lands for hiking, hunting, fishing, and camping, 90 percent of voters agree the mountains and outdoors are what makes living in their state special.
These issues define Western voters’ way of life — and cut across partisan lines. In an increasingly divided political environment, it is particularly noteworthy that the John D. Dingell Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act and the Great American Outdoors Act are among the few pieces of non-COVID-19-related legislation to be passed by large bipartisan margins and signed into law recently.
Looking Ahead: The Outdoor Voter Agenda
Outdoor voters are eager to see a proactive agenda to expand and protect national public lands, namely around access, oil and gas leasing, and the impacts of climate change on outdoor recreation.
Protecting and funding public lands. A love for the land is part of Westerners’ regional heritage that connects them across generations. Protecting public lands makes that legacy permanent. But while Western voters believe their government should never reverse progress when it comes to protecting nature, habitats and treasured places, the Mountain West’s lands, waterways and wildlife have become vulnerable:
- Western voters are eager to see a proactive agenda to expand and protect national public lands.
- 75 percent of voters support establishing a national goal of protecting 30 percent of America by 2030.
- 79 percent of Western voters support increasing funding for maintenance and infrastructure on public lands and parks to ensure public access, provide needed upkeep, and stimulate the economy in the West.
Reining in unregulated oil and gas development. The outdoor activities Western voters love depend on keeping energy development away from the places it should not be. Responsible energy development requires taking the maximum steps so that oil and gas extraction where it occurs is safe, deferential to the surrounding environment and wildlife, and provides the public with a fair return for the use of resources.
- Western voters show strong support for a variety of common sense regulations and restrictions on energy development on public lands.
- 67 percent of Western voters believe oil and gas should be kept in the ground on public lands or allowed within strict limitations and regulations to ensure that the land, wildlife, water, and public safety are protected first and foremost.
- 74 percent of Westerners support increasing royalties for oil, gas, and coal extraction on public lands, while 88 percent support requiring oil and gas companies to detect and repair gas leaks in equipment.
Addressing the impacts of climate change on public lands and outdoor recreation. Mounting impacts of climate change are being felt across the country, and research shows that many Western public lands are being impacted more rapidly than the rest of the country. Climate change is driving longer and more intense wildfire seasons, decreased snowpack and water retention, drought, impacts on wildlife, extreme weather events, heat waves, and sea-level rise, all of which impact public lands such as national parks.
- With drought, wildfires, mudslides and unpredictable weather, climate change has made it clear to Western voters that it’s more important than ever to protect natural resources, public lands, and open spaces.
- Nearly two-thirds of Westerners support making public lands a net-zero source of carbon pollution to help combat the threat of climate change.
View our polling
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