The result is a landmark win for local climate advocates, most notably outgoing Governor Jay Inslee, who helped establish the climate program in the first place and has been among those leading the campaign to keep it.

“Washingtonians said loud and clear that they value clean air and clean water — and they don’t want to go backwards,” Inslee said in a press release reacting to the election results. “We also send a message around the country about what is possible for smart climate action that invests in communities.” Along with environmental groups, many big businesses in the state, including oil major BP Plc, Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp., pushed to defeat the measure.

As of Wednesday morning, with more than 60% of expected votes counted, about 62% of voters opposed ballot initiative I-2117 while 38% supported it. The measure is unlikely to receive enough of the remaining votes to overcome the deficit.

This measure was one of multiple ballot initiatives bankrolled by wealthy conservative Seattle-area investor Brian Heywood and his Let’s Go Washington political action campaign. Heywood’s primary argument for repealing the climate policy was that it would lower gas prices. One of his other initiatives this election cycle, I-2066, seeks to ensure access to natural gas in homes and other buildings across the state; that race is still too close to call.

In response to the I-2117 result, Heywood said in a statement that the vote numbers “are not what we would have wanted to see, but they do not mean defeat. We have already won because the people in this state know they can mobilize to hold their government accountable.”

Launched in 2023, Washington’s “cap and invest” program, as it’s officially called, requires fossil fuel, technology and other companies with large greenhouse gas emissions to pay for their pollution in a carbon market. It’s raised more than $3 billion to help fund state programs, including paying for kids to use public transportation for free across the state, helping low-income homeowners replace their fossil fuel HVAC systems and ferry electrification.

State officials had forecast that the program’s repeal likely would have led to funding being eliminated or sharply reduced for multiple state programs in fiscal year 2025 and beyond. It’s also unclear if and how the state would have been able to meet its own climate goals of slashing emissions 45% by 2030, 70% by 2040 and 95% by 2050 over 1990 levels without the climate policy in place.