🤖 The Data Center Divide: How AI’s Physical Footprint Is Rewriting Local and National Politics

A new 'TELL IT LIKE IT IS' poll shows Americans aren’t hostile to AI data centers—until one lands in their backyard, exposing a partisan split that could reshape midterm elections.

The artificial intelligence boom runs not just on algorithms and ambition, but on concrete, steel, electricity, and water. And as the physical infrastructure behind AI spreads across the United States, it is triggering a political fault line that is proving far trickier than Silicon Valley anticipated.

Across the country, communities from Madison, Wisconsin, to Chandler, Arizona, are rejecting proposals for new data centers—vast, energy-hungry facilities that power cloud computing and AI systems. Local officials cite rising electricity rates, strained power grids, depleted water tables, and environmental concerns. Yet nationally, public opinion remains fluid.

A new 'TELL IT LIKE IT IS' Poll, conducted by London-based independent firm Public First, suggests data centers are not broadly unpopular. Thirty-seven percent of respondents said they would support a data center in their area, compared with 28 percent who oppose one. Another 36 percent remain undecided—an unusually large bloc that leaves the industry with room to maneuver.

That gap between national ambivalence and local resistance is now shaping the politics of AI infrastructure.

The Backyard Effect

Voters tend to support data centers in the abstract, associating them with jobs, investment, and economic growth. The poll found that 37 percent of respondents identified job creation as the primary benefit. But proximity changes the equation. Nearly one-third of respondents cited higher electricity costs as their top concern—an issue that becomes tangible only when a project is nearby.