Excerpt:
Climate change might not be a top priority for voters, but keeping quiet about it may backfire…
A hush has fallen over the Democratic Party — a “climate hush,” to be precise. The phrase captures the push within the party to focus more on the high cost of living and less on the planetary crisis, in hopes of addressing a popular diagnosis of why Democrats lost the 2024 presidential election to Donald Trump. Since then, Democratic politicians have been mentioning the subject less on social media and in their press releases. Candidates in this summer’s primaries might have it in their platforms, but it’s the rare candidate who campaigns on it.
But a new report pushes back against the idea that talking about climate change could cause Democrats to lose votes. The 2035 Initiative, a climate policy research center at the University of California, Santa Barbara, released polling this month that suggests that emphasizing the issue could increase support for Democratic candidates. The release comes ahead of primaries for key states — including Michigan, Minnesota, and Virginia — that could determine whether Democrats regain control over Congress.
“Our data shows pretty firmly that adding climate change to the mix is neutral to helpful from a political perspective,” said Matto Mildenberger, a political science professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who worked on the report. His team conducted two surveys this summer with roughly 3,500 total participants, weighted to represent the U.S. electorate with a mix of voters from across the political spectrum. He said it’s the first empirically rigorous evaluation of the “climate hush” hypothesis.
It’s part of a growing pushback to the climate hushing phenomenon, spearheaded by longtime climate advocate Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island, and a collection of experts studying political science and public opinion. “This is a sort of a sign of where the conversation has moved, in that you do have this really robust effort to attempt to highlight that climate change is something that Democrats should continue to be talking about in a big way,” said Tré Easton, vice president for public affairs at Searchlight Institute, a Democratic-aligned think tank.
Last September, Searchlight argued that the “first rule about solving climate change” was “don’t say climate change,” provocative advice that’s been invoked as an example of climate hushing. Easton rejects that characterization. “It’s just very interesting to see Searchlight treated as, like, the prime climate-husher organization,” he said. “I didn’t know that’s where I worked…”
