Photograph by Grant Puckett / Stills
words by miranda green
For most of my political career, I’ve spent election nights in a newsroom eating takeout pizza with fellow staffers while following Associated Press campaign calls as they came in and frantically filing stories about the results.
But I watched last night’s results from home, surrounded by friends, my cat, and some pumpkin beer. The experience was no less electric. As news anchors called races for the first-ever elected Muslim senator, then the first-ever elected Black governor and the first-ever elected openly gay senator, it hit me that the evening’s results would not just be record-breaking for the Democratic Party, but for the country: a night etched into history.
Polls leading up to the election offered early promises of victory to Democrats, who tempered their excitement with cautious optimism. But on Tuesday, early voting data from key battleground states showed voters were turning out early in record numbers. In Texas, the more than 7.7 million Texans who voted early exceeded the state’s previous midterm record from 2018.
That turnout went largely to Democratic candidates, with seats flipping blue in some of the rubiest red states.
Here’s a taste of just how powerful it was:
By 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, pundits had called the House for Democrats. By 9 p.m., they projected Democrats would take over the Senate. The Democratic Party also picked up five new governor’s seats across the country by night’s end. Republicans flipped just two House seats.
Political correspondents and consultants had whispered conspiratorially about a potential “blue wave.” Tuesday night proved to be a tsunami.
Pundits, journalists, and the public characterized the election results as a complete rebuke of Trump’s policies, namely those impacting people’s pocketbooks.
Exit polls showed cost of living, including gas prices, was a major concern. Nearly 45% of people answering a CBS exit poll said their financial situation was worse this year than two years ago. Polls also showed that data centers factored significantly into people’s votes. An NBC exit poll found 56% of voters said AI and data centers were a major or crucial factor in their congressional voting decisions. Those opposed to data centers also skewed Democrat (64%).
Data centers in some states had an outsized impact on election results. Candidates in areas where data centers exist or are being built have faced increasing pushback from voters, with some candidates—including Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro—shifting their messaging to be more critical of the technology.
Abbott lost to Gina Hinojosa, who called for tougher restrictions on data centers, while Shapiro won against his Republican challenger.
About $173 million was spent on advertising mentioning data centers through this election cycle. Democrats took the lead, spending $140 million of that amount.
The clearest test of the data center backlash Tuesday was Ohio’s Senate race. Exit polls found that 60% of those who opposed data centers in Ohio voted for Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, with just 35% voting for his Republican opponent, incumbent Sen. Jon Husted. Brown ultimately beat Husted by almost 5 percentage points.
While affordability and inflation were top of mind for voters, midterm results will also affect climate policy at virtually every level of government. To get a sense of how, I chatted this morning with one-time Democratic presidential hopeful and former three-term Washington Gov. Jay Inslee. Inslee ran his presidential campaign as the first climate-focused candidate, and his climate pledge—guided in part by political scientist Leah Stokes—later became a working blueprint for Biden’s campaign.
Below is our condensed conversation.
Miranda Green
Were you surprised by the scale of the Democratic victories?
Jay Inslee
Democracy and clean energy are both alive this morning. It’s a good day. The extent of this blowout, I think, calls upon us to use new language because it is such an unusually powerful event. And the way I look at it is, you know, we’ve previously seen elections that were a thumpin’, but I think this was a Trumpin’. The Republicans got a severe Trumpin’ as a result of their slavish, cult-like behavior, which has allowed him to drive up gas prices and diesel prices and electricity prices and food prices.
The corruption of Donald Trump has now affected individual families’ pocketbooks. A guy comes in saying he’s gonna tame inflation in 24 hours, and he’s just made it worse, particularly on the energy front, and he hasn’t lifted a finger. In fact, he’s made it so much worse with this war, obviously, and his trade policies.
And Americans figured that out. And so his corruption was not just morally offensive, not just an offense to democracy. It was an offense to people’s pocketbooks in the most direct fashion.
So there were signs of this, but I still think this was still surprising to those of us who’ve been around for a few years.
Miranda
You called this an “energy election.” What do you mean by that?
Jay
Well, I think the dominant unifying issue in almost all of these races was about energy, because energy costs were the things that were smacking people right in the face every day they drove up to the gas pump and every time they paid utility bills. And here we had a guy who said he was gonna do something about it. In fact, he came in there, and he made it worse with his war and his trade policies.
And importantly, his denying access to cheaper sources of energy for Americans—because right now wind and solar … are the cheapest sources of energy. And what has he done? He’s tried to say no, no, no, no, you can’t have solar, you can’t have wind, you can’t have batteries, because I’m in a corrupt bargain with the fossil fuel boys.
Miranda
Would the election have turned out differently without Trump’s war in Iran and the resulting increase in gas prices?
Jay
I think it was a significant event, because it is the principal reason gas prices have gone up. But utility prices were going up, as well, because of him trying to shove expensive electricity down people’s throats.
The good news is we can do something about it now because we got these new governors … and governors are gonna really lead the clean energy deployment across our country.
Miranda
Data centers were a major election issue. Why do you think voters are so concerned about them?
Jay
Well, it’s an extremely important issue because the demands for electricity are so extraordinary with data centers. Over 30% of all the new electricity-generating demand in the next decade is expected to come from data centers, from this one source in our economy. So this is an enormous new demand on our grid. That’s number one.
And number two, we run a great risk if they end up using dirty fuels. We have to breathe the toxicity from burning methane. And the climate change gases coming from these things can be horrific.
So it’s a very important issue for the nation. We’ve got to insist that we use clean energy when we build these centers.
Miranda
What can we expect from the newly elected Democratic governors?
Jay
Well, a lot. And I’ve been working with them. I work with a group called the State Power Project, and we help governors assess the policies they can use to give people cheaper, cleaner energy. And they each have policies, and I’m really excited about their leadership.
This is a great crop, and they all have some plans specific to their own states, but they have a lot in common, one of which is in data centers. They have sort of three principles of data centers. One, that data centers do not impose costs on residential users. Two, that data centers do not cause more pollution in our communities that we’re breathing. And three, that we don’t allow these secret sweetheart deals with data centers.
All of them, I think, recognize that they want to try to give access to Americans to cheaper, cleaner energy. And that’s wind, solar, batteries, EVs.
Miranda
With Democrats taking control of Congress, what can we realistically expect on climate policy?
Jay
Well, first off, we should be ambitious because the American people are behind us. We should not be self-defeating by saying no, we can’t do that; Trump will veto it. We’ve got to send bills to him that advance clean energy policy, give people access to wind, solar, batteries, EVs, and charging stations.
We’ve got to stop Donald Trump from choking off access to wind and solar power. That means we’ve got to use every mechanism possible, including every single budgetary fight possible.
He’s gonna need money for all kinds of stuff he wants, and he shouldn’t get a penny, he shouldn’t get a nickel, he shouldn’t get a dime for anything he wants until he agrees to permit and site these facilities.
Miranda
Trump is promising payments to offshore wind companies through the congressional Judgment Fund, which some members of Congress argue is an illegal use of the fund. Could a Democratic Congress make that harder?
Jay
We should assume everything he does is illegal because that is his modus operandi of this criminal conspiracy. And we ought to fight him in court as much as possible. But we have the huge wind at our back that the country’s with us on this. And we oughta use that power and recognize the power that we have just from a moral standpoint.
And the Republicans that saved their seats—they’re gonna be up for election another two years from now. And if they don’t get the message, we’ll be back. So maybe some of them should start thinking about their slavish devotion to this madman.
Editor’s Note: This interview has been condensed and edited for purposes of length and clarity.
Want me to look into The Understory of something? Send me an email!
Join our membership community. Support our work, receive a complimentary subscription to Atmos Magazine, and more.
Why the Blue Wave Brings New Hope for Clean Energy
