We’re back with a pop-up newsletter before the midterms! Welcome to Climate on the Ballot, the weekly elections email from the editors at Covering Climate Now. Our goal from now through November 3 is to help you and your newsroom illuminate politics’ role in addressing climate change and integrate climate into your coverage of this year’s midterms — at the local, state, and national levels. Subscribe to get it in your inbox on Fridays!
This Week: Climate Hushing
Since Trump’s return to office, incumbent politicians, candidates, and large swaths of the media have grown increasingly quiet on climate change. “Climate hushing,” it’s come to be known. The trend persists even though the climate connection with this year’s top voter concerns — affordability and the economy — is crystal clear; cheap, clean energy is an affordable energy solution.
So, why is this happening?
Democrats, wrongly, think they’ll lose votes if they talk about climate change, explains Dr. Leah Stokes, a professor of environmental politics at University of California Santa Barbara and the author of the new book The Carbon Wave and The Electric Era Substack, in a recent live conversation with CCNow about rising energy bills. “Inside Climate News made this really interesting report where they looked at all the press releases that Democrats are putting out,” she said. “Back in 2021, when there was a lot of climate coverage, one in nine press releases… talked about climate change. This year it’s one in 50, which is 2%.”
But that decision is misguided, according to a July 2026 study by The 2035 Initiative, a research collaboration out of UC Santa Barbara. A survey of 3,500 registered voters found that voters from both parties said they’d be more likely to vote for candidates who talked about climate change, by a four- to five-point margin. Among committed Democrats, it was 9.5 points.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who hasn’t stopped talking about climate change since 2012, agrees that “climate hushing” is a lost opportunity and a strategic mistake. “It’s now battering people’s home insurance, property values, [and] pocketbook concerns,” he recently told the Associated Press.
During Climate Week NYC, California governor Gavin Newsom condemned his party’s silence on climate change. In a CCNow-organized newsmaker interview, the governor agreed that candidates must be “laser-focused” on affordability concerns, but that they’ve got to “connect the dots” with the economic impacts extreme heat, drought, and other climate impacts are having.
“There is, it turns out, an often overlooked solution to the climate problem — and that is journalism,” wrote CCNow co-founder Kyle Pope in an op-ed for World Journalism Day. “Journalism has the potential to help the public break through on climate change. By dismissing the narrative that people don’t care, and identifying what’s needed to urgently solve the problem — in the voting booth, on the streets, in people’s homes — news outlets have an opportunity, and duty, to join with their audiences to solve the most urgent issue of our lives.”
– Theresa Riley, CCNow’s Audience Editor
What We’re Reading
- Americans Still Love the Environment (By Jeva Lange for Heatmap News)
- These State Elections Could Reshape Climate and Energy Policy (By Dan Gearino for Inside Climate News) This story is republishable by any outlet.
- Disaster insurance, datacenters, right to repair: meet the midterm candidates running on green policies (By Dharna Noor for The Guardian)
- In Florida, the Climate Crisis Comes Due as a Higher Insurance Premium (From The Heat 2026, a series by Marcus Baram for Capital & Main) This story is republishable by any outlet.
- The Data Center Backlash Should Also Be a Climate Reckoning. It Isn’t Yet (From Power Play, a series by Molly Taft for Wired)
- Meet the super PAC working to crush clean energy’s political foes (By Julian Spector for Canary News) This story is republishable by any outlet.
- Even Democrats Don’t Talk About ‘Climate Change’ Anymore (By Emily Pontecorvo for Heatmap News)
- ‘Climate hushing’ has swept the Democratic Party. New polling suggests it’s a mistake (By Kate Yoder for Grist) This story is republishable by any outlet.
- More than 70% of new solar is being built in states that voted for Trump (By Austin Corona for Grist) This story is republishable by any outlet.
CCNow Elections Guide
Check out our new 2026 Elections Guide for the latest polls and studies connecting climate to local and national races, video recaps of live conversations with experts on energy affordability and voter concerns, and a collection of stories we like about how climate factors into local, state, and congressional races. We’ll be adding more content and resources to the guide through Election Day!
Before We Go…
The next Climate on the Ballot will look at climate-first voters and new data from the Environmental Voter Project (EVP). In many states, including key battlegrounds like Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina, EVP found that “unlikely voters” are twice as likely to list climate change as a top priority as people who actually turn out. Have you talked with these “climate-first voters” for a story? Send them to us at theresa[at]coveringclimatenow[dot]org.
Climate on the Ballot 2026 Reporting Initiative. We’d love to lift up the great coverage you’re doing about how climate factors into local, state, and congressional races. Send us your reporting to be featured in a curated selection of pieces helping voters understand how climate change is on the ballot this November. Email theresa[at]coveringclimatenow[dot]org with questions, ideas, and links to stories.
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