Searchlight urges party to drop climate from voter outreach
Climate change has dropped from Democratic campaign messaging in the 2026 cycle, a shift sharp enough that some researchers have begun calling it “climate hushing.”
For Charles Hughes, a college student in Massachusetts who chairs the state’s chapter of the College Democrats, the change is visible in his day-to-day political work. “Honestly, it doesn’t come up as much,” Hughes said.
Six years earlier, the climate-focused energy of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary told a different story. During Trump’s first term and the primaries to determine who would run against him, Democrats spoke constantly about climate change. They used it to rally young voters, fueling protests and sweeping demands to remake the economy through proposals like the Green New Deal.
Hughes grew up in Colorado, where wildfire smoke became a recurring feature of summers and where kindergarten lessons covered disappearing habitats. He was among the young voters Democrats courted with climate-focused messaging around the 2020 presidential primary.
The shift extends to organizational strategy. The Searchlight Institute, a Democratic think tank, urged the party to stop mentioning climate change because it is not a priority for voters. The Sunrise Movement, a left-wing group that pushed global warming as a top issue for young people, switched its mission last fall to a broader mandate of fighting Republican President Donald Trump.
Some researchers coined the term “climate hushing” to describe the national shift in conversation around the issue.