Many liberals would like the Democratic Party to put climate change at the center of its messaging and policy agenda. They would also like Democrats to win more elections. In a recent column in the Washington Post, former Washington governor and presidential candidate Jay Inslee argued that there is no tension between these two objectives: The best way for Democrats to defeat Republicans is to focus more on bold climate action.
Inslee’s case can be broken down into three claims:
- Democrats lost in 2024 largely because their support among younger voters fell sharply.
- Young voters care about climate change. In fact, according to the Associated Press’ polling, 60 percent of young Trump voters are concerned about the climate.
- Therefore, “to present a compelling vision to the next generation,” Democrats “should focus on the issue that simultaneously represents the greatest threat to them and the clearest delineation between the two parties” — climate change.
Inslee is right that young voters swung hard against the Democratic Party in 2024. AP VoteCast, a high-quality exit poll, showed Kamala Harris winning voters under 30 by just 4 points. By contrast, Joe Biden won young voters by more than 20 points in 2020. And it’s also true that young voters are more worried about climate change than older ones.
Nevertheless, the evidence for Inslee’s fundamental thesis — that the best way for Democrats to win back power is to focus more on climate — is weak.
The problem with his argument is simple: Voters — both old and young — do not consider climate change a top priority. And focusing on an issue that voters care relatively little about isn’t a great way to win their support.
This story was first featured in The Rebuild.
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Voters – including young ones – do not consider climate change a top priority
When Gallup asked Americans last year which issues were most important to their vote, climate change ranked 21st out of the 22 issues tested — above transgender rights but below “relations with Russia.” A separate Gallup survey right before the election asked Americans to name their country’s most important problem, and only 2 percent mentioned climate change or the environment. Similarly, in Pew’s polling published in February on the biggest problems facing America today, climate change came in at 17th.
In his op-ed, Inslee’s prime concern is with winning over young voters, on the grounds that declining youth support for Democrats was “the dynamic that caused” Trump’s election. But this is an overstatement. Democrats also lost ground with voters over 30 in 2024. And since older voters far outnumber younger ones, Democrats can’t afford to give exclusive consideration to the latter’s concerns.
This said, young voters’ priorities aren’t actually that distinct from the broader electorate’s. According to AP VoteCast data — which Inslee himself cites — only 8 percent of young voters listed climate change as their No. 1 issue in 2024, while 40 percent named the economy and jobs.
The share of younger voters who considered climate change a top three issue is more substantial. In Tufts University’s post-election survey of the youth vote, 26 percent of respondents put climate as one of their top three priorities. Yet this still constitutes a small minority of the under-35 voting population. Notably, young Americans who did not cast a ballot in 2024 were especially unlikely to prioritize climate, with only 18 percent putting the issue in their top three.
Voters already know the Democratic Party cares a lot about climate change (and that may be a problem)
A proponent of Inslee’s strategy might blame Democrats for the public’s limited concern about climate change. After all, political parties have influence over which issues are and are not salient. If Democrats centered climate change in their messaging, perhaps voters would start prioritizing the issue.
But there are a couple problems with this reasoning. First, as Inslee himself writes, Democrats did put climate at the center of their agenda under Biden, making “historic investments in clean energy” through the Inflation Reduction Act. And Biden and Harris spoke frequently about the need to combat the climate crisis. Yet none of this was sufficient to turn climate change into a top 15 issue for the American public.
Second, and most critically, Americans are well aware that the Democratic Party deems climate change a policy priority. In January, when the New York Times and Ipsos asked voters to name the issues that are most important to Democrats, climate came in third.
In other words, the party does not need to put greater emphasis on climate in order to convey its commitment to decarbonization — that message is already coming through. And last year, Harris won voters who considered climate change one of their top three issues by 70 points, according to Navigator Research.
The problem is simply that such voters aren’t very numerous. This is a point that progressive donors and activists are liable to miss, since voters who prioritize climate change are heavily overrepresented in their social circles. According to polling from Democratic data firm Blue Rose research, wealthy and/or “very liberal” Democrats are much more likely than the broader public to name climate as a top concern.
Meanwhile, on the issues that Americans do broadly prioritize — such as the cost of living, the economy, and inflation — Republicans boasted a double-digit advantage in 2024.
Focusing more rhetorical energy on climate change is unlikely to enhance Democrats’ credibility on bread-and-butter issues. To the contrary, there’s reason to fear it would hurt that cause.
One of the party’s biggest challenges today is that voters don’t think Democrats share their priorities. In the Times’s poll mentioned above, voters were asked to name their top five issue priorities and then those of the Democratic Party. Respondents said their top issues were the economy, health care, immigration, taxes, and crime — while the Democrats’ were abortion, LGBT policy, climate change, the state of democracy, and health care.
In other words, they suggested that Democrats weren’t focused on their top concerns, with the exception of health care policy.
This sense that Democrats are more preoccupied with niche social causes than the middle-class’s core material needs surfaces in other survey data. For instance, even after Trump engineered an economic crisis in April with his unpopular tariffs, Quinnipiac still found the public evenly split on the question of which party “cares more for the needs of people like you.”
Making progress on climate requires removing the GOP from power.
Thus, were Democrats to put greater emphasis on climate change, they would risk perpetuating the idea that the party does not share ordinary Americans’ priorities.
And doing so would also risk directly undermining the party’s standing on the cost of living.
Inslee rightly notes that it is possible to reduce emissions and raise living standards simultaneously. But it’s nevertheless true that there are some tensions between cutting carbon pollution and increasing affordability in the near term. The climate movement has sought to block new fossil fuel extraction and transport projects, an objective that would limit the supply of energy in the near term, thereby potentially increasing costs.
Therefore, if Democrats signal that climate change is their overriding concern, some voters may conclude that the party isn’t committed to keeping gasoline or home heating oil cheap.
Or so some polling would suggest. During the Biden administration, Blue Rose gauged the persuasive impact of hundreds of Republican messages by polling voters, exposing them to a conservative argument, and then polling them again to see if any had switched their voting intentions. The firm found that one of the GOP’s best attack lines — one that outperformed 90 percent of all other Republican messages — was, “Since Day 1, Biden has waged war on energy independence. His failed policies, like canceling the Keystone Pipeline, have led to Americans paying higher heating costs.”
Getting Democrats to focus rhetorically on climate – and making actual progress on decarbonization – may be conflicting goals
To be fair to Inslee, he acknowledges that young voters are preoccupied with the cost of living. And his vision for climate policy foregrounds direct material benefits for ordinary people: He touts the fact that Washington’s “cap-and-investment” program has subsidized working families’ electric bills and provided young people with free access to transit.
This is a fine program. And a national version might deserve a place on Democrats’ laundry list of policy proposals. But the idea that the party’s most electorally expedient message is one that centers climate change just isn’t plausible.
This doesn’t mean that Democrats should never discuss the climate crisis, or advocate for emissions-reducing policies. But the party should not overestimate the political utility of the issue. Climate change is a top priority for progressive donors and activists — but not for swing voters, old or young.
That reality does not render decarbonization any less important. But making progress on climate requires removing the GOP from power. And it will be difficult for Democrats to do that, if they refuse to align their party’s priorities with those of the electorate.
