Data center backlash is uniting America

Across the 2026 midterms, opposition to data centers has become one of the few issues that moves voters in both parties. The Verge's survey of races in Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, Georgia, Arizona and Iowa finds candidates who once welcomed big tech investments now pledging tax-break repeals, ratepayer protections, local control and, in some cases, outright moratoriums.

The polling explains why. An October Quinnipiac survey found 64 percent of likely Pennsylvania voters think AI data centers will do more harm than good. In Florida, an NBC6/Telemundo poll found 59 percent opposed data centers in their own communities. A leaked National Republican Senatorial Committee memo warned that if Ohio's Senate race is lost and data centers get the blame, politicians nationwide will steer clear of the next one.

Meanwhile, AI money is flooding in. Leading the Future, a super PAC backed by Marc Andreessen and OpenAI President Greg Brockman, has spent $45 million in a year, and the Anthropic-backed Public First Action says it has raised $80 million.

We want to be clear about where we stand. AI is useful, and useful AI needs computing power that has to live somewhere. But the backlash isn't irrational, and the industry would be making a mistake to treat it as a messaging problem. People are reacting to concrete things: higher power bills, strained water supplies, tax breaks that shift costs onto residents, and deals negotiated behind nondisclosure agreements. Those are fair complaints.

What strikes us most is how many politicians have changed course. Governors who publicly celebrated multibillion-dollar investments from Google and Amazon are now auditing grid connections and banning NDAs. Candidates in both parties are branding each other "data center" this or that as an insult. When an issue turns into an attack line this quickly, the political ground has shifted, and the industry no longer has the benefit of the doubt.

The policy ideas that are converging are mostly reasonable, and we'd support many of them. Making data centers pay for their own power and grid upgrades, ending sales-tax giveaways, requiring water-saving cooling, and giving communities a real say all push costs back onto the companies that profit. Those measures make the buildout more sustainable, not less. A good data center project should be able to pass those tests.

Blanket moratoriums are a harder call. A pause can buy time for rules to catch up, and several candidates frame it that way. But if bans spread state by state, the likely result isn't less AI. It's computing capacity concentrating in fewer places, possibly where oversight is weaker, while the communities that said no lose any say in how it's built. That's where this leads if it scales without smart rules alongside it.

I'm also watching the money. AI-backed super PACs spending tens of millions while voters are this skeptical is a risky mix. Campaign spending can win a race. It can also confirm the suspicion that this industry would rather buy outcomes than earn local consent. The companies that come out ahead will be the ones that show up with signed commitments on power, water and local benefits, not bigger ad budgets.

Virginia has the most planned data center projects in the country and Texas is second, according to The Verge. Federal efforts to make large power users cover their own grid costs have stalled: Sen. Jon Husted's Ratepayer Protection Act passed the House but narrowly failed in the Senate. Several of the races where data centers are central, including Ohio's and Michigan's Senate seats, are rated toss-ups and could help decide control of Congress.