The recent midterm elections brought historic voter turnout in the midst of rising costs of gas, groceries, and energy.
In the Mountain West, residents saw a historically dry summer and severe wildfire conditions, followed by an abnormally wet fall and destructive floods in the Four Corners region this autumn.
Max Boykoff is a faculty member in environmental studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. He’s also director of the SPIKE Center for Sustainability Education, and a fellow in the Cooperative Institute for Research and Environmental Sciences. He says concerns about human-caused climate change were on the ballot, even if those words weren’t explicitly used on the campaign trail.
Rocky Mountain Community Radio’s Caroline Llanes spoke with Boykoff to break down the election results.
Editor’s note: this transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Caroline Llanes: Let's start off by looking at the national picture. Obviously, the headlines were this “blue tsunami,” this really stunning rebuke of the GOP and the Trump administration's policies. Where do you see climate and environmental issues playing into that, if at all?
Max Boykoff: Yeah, I think it would be overreaching to say that this was a green wave. I think that the questions that were really raised in a lot of what I'm hearing about early voter turnout and some of the issues that are important to them, cross several different important issues. Could we connect the dots back to the considerations around climate, environment, sustainability? Definitely. But I think that in voters' minds themselves, at least what I've been picking up on and learning, that climate, environment, sustainability are within this larger turnout.
So the blue tsunami, there's lots of different synonyms that we could think of to describe what was a really strong perspective and voice collectively from voters in this country that did think about and speak to many important issues. I've been taking a look at a few others' takes on this and just thinking about affordability as it relates back to carbon-based fuels, energy sources, that affordability then can be seen as a climate/environment/sustainability set of questions.
But that may not have been directly on voters' minds as they were going to the polls.
Llanes: Let's zoom in a little bit to some of the election results here in Colorado. We had some climate-related issues on the ballot this year; I'm wondering what you make of some of those results.
Boykoff: Picking up on Amendment 82, thinking about the right to natural gas, I mean, it was resoundingly a “no.” And so that's very interesting, and I think that those are data points about collective voice. But at the same time, with the ballot measure on passenger rail, that was a resounding “yes.” And so in these times of affordability challenges at the forefront, of costs of prices and such, that a decision collectively to move forward with funding passenger rail expansion is a signal from the Colorado voters.
Llanes: Thinking about the candidate piece of things, did you see climate coming up for candidates in Colorado races?
Boykoff: Yeah, I think that the kinds of conversations that candidates forge with their constituents can be really different: if you're having a conversation in Greeley, if you're having a conversation in Grand Junction, if you're having a conversation in Boulder, Colorado. And so where climate change, environment, sustainability explicitly show up are important to a certain extent, that we don't want to shy away from those challenges, but they can also be discussed in other ways.
And so, you know, if I'm living out in Greeley and I'm paying a lot for gas and paying a lot for diesel in the business that I'm running, that can be seen as a conversation relating to those topics, we could talk about it in those terms. If we're talking in Grand Junction about high food prices and the cost of our groceries, we can have that conversation and, importantly, have that resonance with folks there. But, are we explicit about climate change, environment sustainability? You know, maybe that comes a bit later in these ongoing conversations.
Overall, as a state, if we're talking about utilities and the cost of utilities, those are discussions that are resonant here in Boulder, Colorado, where I am and across the state. But the linkages there in a place like— as I know the constituents in Boulder can make those connections much more readily and the candidates then choose to do that because they know that that's a connection that's on voters' minds in those places.
Llanes: So obviously a big statement from voters this election, and we're going to have a new Congress, a big change in the political makeup in the House and the Senate. Do you see this new Congress being able to make progress on climate issues, or maybe being able to undo some of the rollbacks on climate policy that we've seen in the past couple of years?
Boykoff: I think that's a great set of questions. I think that this is a new moment, as, you know, a lot of people have indicated, record turnout overall, record turnout in those who have said in the exit polling that they care about climate change (and the) environment. Those voters have, in those exit polls—some of the early returns, some of the early voting polls—have said that voters want their political leaders to talk about climate change and the environment more, and not less.
There's also indications that voters worry about corruption, worry about giveaways to the fossil fuel industry, and the costs of that instead of stronger regulations. And so, with those indications that where climate-related issues are— the ways in which we're moving about and living and meeting our livelihood needs, candidates need to talk about them more, and some of the early voting exit polls are indicating that that was a part of voters' decision making.” That comes from the Environmental Voter Project, which has got some really good insights about how to make sense of what's just happened.
Going forward then, to your, the other part, another part of your question is that as we move forward, we are much more capably set to address the climate, environment, and sustainability. That's not about partisanship, necessarily. It doesn't have to be. It's about evaluating candidates—now elected officials’—priorities as they relate to these intersecting sets of issues on voters' minds, of challenges in their daily lives. And so we're seeing new capacity that is collective. Colorado has maybe gone more strong in those directions, but we see it in Arizona and Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, where I'm from.
We're seeing that those who have expressed their interest in addressing these issues are now in these elected positions, and so it gives overall, at a national level, opportunities to then address things in Congress. You had asked about that: their spring budget resolution that's coming, the fall appropriations bills that are coming, there's going to be a different stance than there was just in the previous Congress.
Llanes: After the results of this election, how are you thinking about how climate is going to play a role in future elections?
Boykoff: On my mind is thinking about new voters, thinking about university-age students that I interact with, that I teach here at the University of Colorado Boulder, and how they're growing into this world and how they're experiencing climate change. They're experiencing environmental challenges. They're experiencing where they sit within these spaces of decision making around sustainability and unsustainability. And so as we're seeing this, what's being called the “blue wave” now, and as we're seeing these changes in voter turnout in voter decision making, on the horizon is a whole new generation of decision makers.
I was born into a world where it wasn't until high school into college that I really started to get my head around climate change and environment. Young people that are voting today, my own kids that are in their 20s, are now making these voting decisions because they've been born into a world where this has already been part of a conversation. They may have had experiences, they may have a lot of emotions around their anxieties about moving into a world as an adult. And so what we're seeing as a “blue wave” now may be a part of something bigger that we're going to continue to see as the next election cycles come forward.
Llanes: Well, Max, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with Rocky Mountain Community Radio.
Boykoff: You bet.
Copyright 2026 Rocky Mountain Community Radio. This story was shared via Rocky Mountain Community Radio, a network of public media stations in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and New Mexico, including Aspen Public Radio.
