Voters Send Republicans the Bill in the Energy Affordability Election

To: Interested Parties
From: Evergreen Action Communications Director Seth Nelson
Date: Wednesday, November 4, 2026
Re: Voters Send Republicans the Bill in the Energy Affordability Election

Democrats won the House and the Senate on Tuesday in a resounding rejection of the Republicans who spent two years driving up costs. Nobody had to tell voters what this election was about. They felt the squeeze every time they pulled up to the pump or opened a bill: more. More to fill the tank. More to keep the lights on. More for every grocery staple a diesel truck hauls. On Election Day, 87% of voters said they were concerned about the cost of gas and diesel, and 86% about the price of their utilities.

So they voted for the candidates promising relief. Lower power bills. Homegrown clean energy that doesn’t spike every time a war breaks out overseas. Data centers that pay their own way, instead of passing the bill to everyone else.

This wasn’t a fluke. Last year, Governors Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger pioneered this playbook and achieved decisive victories in races fought over the cost of living, with energy bills front and center. Now it has carried new congressional majorities. Energy affordability isn’t an issue Democrats have to play defense on. It’s an issue they win on.

The lesson of this election is simple. Voters wanted lower bills, and Democrats showed up with solutions: cheap, clean power and accountability for the data centers driving bills up. Republicans showed up with excuses. Now the work starts. For the next two years, that means making the Trump administration answer for higher bills and building support for the solutions that will bring them down.

Democrats Ran on Lower Bills, and Voters Rewarded Them

Across the map, the winners made the same argument: energy bills are too high, and here’s how to bring them down. They didn’t treat energy affordability as a side issue. They made it central to their closing argument.

Cheap, clean power was the solution, not the problem. 

Led by Trump, Republicans promised lower bills while pursuing a staggering list of policies that actually increased energy costs. Democrats turned Republicans’ weakness into their strength. And they had the solutions to back it up: the fastest way to bring costs down is to build more of the cheapest power available, not prop up costly coal and gas plants. Voters responded, in no small part because so many of them had lived through Republicans’ energy agenda firsthand.

Take Michigan’s 4th District, where St. Sen. Sean McCann defeated Rep. Bill Huizenga. When the Trump administration ordered the J.H. Campbell coal plant in Huizenga’s own district to keep running past its scheduled retirement, Huizenga cheered it on. That order has already racked up at least $295 million in extra costs for ratepayers. Huizenga also falsely blamed clean energy for rising bills, insisting Michiganders “just want to keep the lights on without going broke.” They do. That’s why they elected McCann, who backs more wind and solar to lower bills and ran on “solutions that reduce costs for Michigan families—not aging coal and natural gas plants that make energy more expensive for ratepayers.”

In Michigan’s U.S. Senate race, Abdul El-Sayed pointed to price spikes as proof that the U.S. remains “uniquely susceptible” until it builds out clean energy. “We need 100% renewable energy, and we need it yesterday,” he said.

Rebecca Cooke made the same case in Wisconsin’s 3rd, tying clean energy to “good-paying local jobs” and lower costs for working families, while her opponent, Rep. Derrick Van Orden stood in the Oval Office to cheer a $700 million taxpayer bailout for coal.

Big Tech should pay its own way.

As the data center boom drove up power demand, who foots the bill became one of the defining fights of the midterms, up and down the ballot, and Democrats were clear it shouldn’t be families. Voters agreed: three-quarters opposed a new data center in their community, and they backed Democratic House candidates by 28 points, according to exit polling.

In Georgia’s U.S. Senate race, Jon Ossoff said no family “should pay a dime more” to power Big Tech’s data centers.”

In Pennsylvania’s 7th District, Bob Brooks warned against “data centers raising our energy costs while an out-of-state corporation gets rich,” while his opponent, Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, was still blaming rising electricity costs on the previous administration nearly two years into Trump’s term. Voters didn’t buy his excuses.

In the neighboring 8th District, Paige Cognetti put it bluntly: “Don’t raise our electric bills.” Her opponent, Rep. Rob Bresnahan, hailed data centers as “catalysts for economic growth” while holding up to $2 million in stock in AI and tech companies powering the boom—stock trades that Cognetti highlighted in ads and campaign messaging about profiting from data center development. New York’s 17th, Wisconsin’s 3rd, and Pennsylvania’s 8th each saw more than $1 million in ads about data centers driving up costs.

They made Republicans own their record.

The winners didn’t let their opponents hide. Janelle Stelson told voters in Pennsylvania’s 10th District that Rep. Scott Perry’s “unrelenting hostility to clean energy” could add $130 to their bills. In New York’s 17th District, Cait Conley hammered incumbent Rep. Mike Lawler for voting to slash the clean energy credits that brought billions to build new, cheap power into the state. With at least $191 million in ads about utility and energy bills on the air this cycle, most of them from Democrats, voters heard that contrast loud and clear.

The same energy affordability story played out in gubernatorial and other down ballot races across the country.

Michigan and Wisconsin voters chose governors whose plans, according to independent modeling, will put real money back into their pockets. Governor-elect Jocelyn Benson’s agenda could save Michigan households an average of $638 through 2040, while her opponent’s plan to repeal the state’s clean energy laws would have cost them $2,135. In Wisconsin, Governor-elect David Crowley’s plan to double funding for the state’s efficiency programs could save households $826, versus $3,181 in added costs under his opponent’s plan, a swing of up to $4,000 per family.

The theme ran all the way down the ballot. In Georgia, Democrats Peter Hubbard and Sheila Edwards won seats on the Public Service Commission, the body that sets the state’s power rates, by running on cheap solar, batteries, and fair rates. The victories handed Democrats majority control of the Commission for the first time in 30 years.

What Now: Accountability and the Groundwork for Lower Energy Bills

The new majority won by offering solutions for lower bills. With Trump still in the White House, its most powerful tool for the next two years is holding his administration accountable. Every energy price hike the administration has handed families, from canceled clean energy projects to costly coal plants propped up with taxpayer money, is now fair game. So are the utilities asking for rate hike after rate hike, the grid operators stalling cheap, clean power from getting online, and the tech giants whose data centers are driving up demand and costs. Voters will hear exactly who drove up their bills, all the way to 2028. 

It also means putting real solutions on the floor. Democrats can pass bills to restore incentives for cheap, clean power, make data centers pay their own way, and rein in the utility profits baked into every bill. Trump is unlikely to sign them. But every vote builds the case, and the support, for the day Democrats hold both the White House and Congress again.

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This was an energy affordability election, plain and simple. Voters were tired of paying more month after month, and they picked the candidates who offered real solutions. Cheap, clean power and making Big Tech pay its own way weren’t liabilities to manage. They were winning issues. Now the winners have to hold the people who drove up those bills accountable, and start laying the groundwork to bring them down.