Polling: Climate Messaging Helps, Not Hurts Democrats
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- The 2035 Initiative at UC Santa Barbara released polling from roughly 3,500 respondents across two summer surveys, finding that adding climate change to candidate messaging is 'neutral to helpful' from a political perspective — the first empirically rigorous test of the 'climate hush' hypothesis.
- Mildenberger's polling found about two-thirds of all respondents supported a government program investing in solar and wind energy no matter how it was framed — as 'addressing climate change,' 'developing new energy sources,' or 'reducing pollution and protecting clean air' — and roughly 60% of Republicans surveyed backed the policy regardless of framing.
- Mildenberger found that candidates making climate a top priority gained a 4.5 percentage point bump in voter selection among all respondents, with no negative effect among voters open to voting Republican, though it did hurt among committed Republicans.
- Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Tré Easton of Searchlight Institute are spearheading pushback against the 'climate hush' trend; Easton rejects the characterization of Searchlight as the 'prime climate husher organization,' saying his organization never advised never talking about climate change.
- Liam Kerr of WelcomePAC and other critics point to 2024 winners Jared Golden (Maine) and Ruben Gallego (Arizona) as counterexamples — Golden touted fighting Biden's electric car mandate, and Gallego released an 'all-of-the-above' energy plan — arguing Democrats won by distancing from climate messaging.
- Both camps agree climate change ranks 12th out of 15 issues for voters, behind cost of living and health care but ahead of foreign policy and AI; the dispute is over whether Democratic candidates should emphasize it anyway.
- Mildenberger warned that if climate slips from public conversation, Democrats will lose the opportunity to act on it next time they hold power, pointing to how 2020's climate debate created momentum for the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 — the country's widest-ranging climate law before most of it was repealed last year.
Why it matters: Primaries in Michigan, Minnesota, and Virginia that could determine congressional control force Democrats to weigh polling showing climate messaging is 'neutral to helpful' against 2024 winners Jared Golden and Ruben Gallego who emphasized energy affordability over climate. Sixty percent of surveyed Republicans backed clean energy regardless of framing.
