If you’re anything like me, you woke up the morning after Election Day asking yourself “What the hell just happened?” Now, about a month later, we have a pretty good idea of what happened, why, and what it means for our country and our planet. I’ll be honest, it’s not great, but it might not be as bad as we think, and there’s a clear path to stopping the worst outcomes if we all do our part.
What Happened
I think it’s important to be clear, this was an extremely close election. Do not believe anyone who tells you this was a blowout or Trump won a mandate. Yes, Republicans and their fossil fuel backers won a federal trifecta, but President Trump won less than 50% of the popular vote and pro-environment candidates picked up two seats in the House. The rightward shift we saw in November does not signal some unrecoverable realignment. There are plenty of hot takes going around about why Democrats lost, but I think it’s important to point out that every governing party in every developed democracy (both “left” and “right”) lost seats in 2024. Voters globally are upset about prices and other issues, and they punished the parties in power.
A small comfort is there’s no evidence attacks against the climate wins of the past four years had any impact on this election. Vice President Harris did not lose because of attacks on her efforts to usher in a clean energy economy or fight climate change. There is evidence, however, that the efforts of the NRDC Action Fund and our allies in the environmental movement made a difference in mitigating losses and setting up a path back to power for pro-environment candidates.
What We Did
Two years ago, the NRDC Action Fund said its role in this election was to help move margins in tight races happening in a few key places:
- California and New York House races where we have our strongest networks.
- Pennsylvania and Michigan due to the overlap of battleground House, Senate, and presidential races.
The Action Fund ran its largest and most sophisticated election efforts ever thanks to the efforts of our amazing supporters. For our champions in these states and others, we were able to:
- Support $58 million in fundraising for environmental champions through GiveGreen, a donor platform operated by a partnership between NRDC Action Votes and the LCV Victory Fund.
- Contact nearly 5 million voters through texting, letter writing, phone banking, and canvassing.
- We exclusively targeted modeled environment voters with inconsistent voting histories, so our volunteers could have authentic conversations with them about shared concerns and explain the need to vote for our planet and people.
- We know we were targeting the right voters because our text response rate was around 10% while other campaigns’ were around 1 to 3%. Unlike so many texts during this period, our messages were interactive, helpful to the voter, and designed to prompt a response.
- Recruit roughly 500 volunteer shifts for our endorsed candidates. We identified, recruited, and directed these members to do real work on the ground for environmental champions up and down the ballot.
- Ran paid media ads on behalf of 14 candidates, including advertising on TV, digital, radio, and through social media influencers.
Of these efforts, the most successful were in New York and California, where 6 of our 8 toss-up House candidates won. These candidates include two very close wins for George Whitesides, a scientist passionate about climate change, and Dave Min, one of the strongest environmental champions in the California legislature. Winning these House races made up for losses in other states and put us just three seats shy of a pro-environment House majority, which brings us to…
What Comes Next
Believe it or not, we’re already less than one year away from the next Election Day. In 2025, we can elect and defend pro-environment trifectas in Virginia and New Jersey, respectively, thus strengthening state-based climate leadership. After that, the 2026 midterms will be just around the corner.
Our efforts in CA and NY have helped make flipping the House a very real possibility in 2026. Only a net gain of three (!) seats is needed to flip the House back to pro-environmental control and provide a voice for continued action on climate and the environment. You better believe the NRDC Action Fund, our activists, and our environmental allies will be ready to play our part in achieving this win and setting up an even bigger victory in 2028.
Mike Cassesso is the political and advocacy director at the NRDC Action Fund.
