{"id":665491,"date":"2026-05-26T06:01:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T06:01:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/665491\/"},"modified":"2026-05-26T06:01:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T06:01:16","slug":"data-centers-for-ai-are-unpopular-could-they-tilt-the-midterms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/665491\/","title":{"rendered":"Data Centers for AI Are Unpopular. Could They Tilt the Midterms?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tHundreds of billions of dollars are flowing<\/a> through the artificial intelligence<\/a> industry and new AI<\/a> tools seem to be popping up everywhere you look \u2014 but most Americans are not big fans of where things are headed. Nearly half of the country holds a negative<\/a> view of AI, and seven in 10 Americans do not<\/a> want a data center built in their area. The battle over the construction of these centers has been heating up in recent months, and opposition to them is notably bipartisan.<\/p>\n

\n\tFrom red states like North Carolina<\/a> to blue states like Oregon<\/a>, communities are forcefully pushing back against plans to build new data centers<\/a>. Residents in these areas have expressed concerns about electricity prices<\/a>, water usage, air and water pollution, tax breaks for developers, and familiar landscapes being taken over by Big Tech infrastructure.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn Maine, Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, vetoed<\/a> a bill last month that would have created the first statewide data center moratorium, arguing that she wanted to avoid<\/a> killing a data center development in the town of Jay. Maine State Rep. Melanie Sachs (D-Freeport) introduced that bill, and tells Rolling Stone she put it forward because of concerns she\u2019s heard from residents of the state.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cGovernor Mills put together an AI task force in December of 2024. Their report came out in October of 2025, and it talked about Maine citizens\u2019 fears around data centers, with their energy use and environmental impact, and it talked about the need for a playbook,\u201d Sachs says.<\/p>\n

\n\tSachs doesn\u2019t want to permanently ban data centers, but she feels the state needs to take a beat before any construction can start and figure out what will be best for residents. \u201cThere is research<\/a> showing that these [data centers] do not create jobs. There\u2019s a fallacy around job creation,\u201d Sachs says. \u201cWhat I\u2019ve constantly said is that this was simply about giving us time \u2026 because the impact of these particular developments goes far beyond the locality where they\u2019re sited.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tThe people of Maine aren\u2019t happy with Mills vetoing this legislation, Sachs says, because they\u2019re worried about their electricity bills going up and the environment being harmed if data centers start being built. In a state that relies heavily on heating during the winter, Sachs says she also worries about grid reliability.<\/p>\n

\n\tData centers are essentially warehouses filled with the specialized processors that power artificial intelligence, which is incredibly energy intensive. Data centers can<\/a> use hundreds of thousands of gallons of water a day to cool these processors, and require<\/a> megawatts of power. The industry\u2019s growth will be hampered without enough new data centers, thus the industry\u2019s to construct them across the nation.<\/p>\n

\n\tMegan Mullin, faculty director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, says the issue is so bipartisan because it touches on something every American cares about.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAmid so much partisan division, opposition to data centers seems to be the thing that unites Americans right now,\u201d Mullin says. \u201cIt\u2019s tempting to attribute this resistance to a growing wariness about technology and the titans who control it, but in reality it\u2019s rooted in the one thing that has always united Americans: our deep affinity for where we live.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe intensity of the opposition to data centers, and AI more generally, has caught some experts by surprise. Ben Green, an assistant professor of information and public policy at the University of Michigan, says he didn\u2019t expect people to become so invested in this debate.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s kind of amazing just how much it\u2019s become such a hot-button issue,\u201d Green says. \u201cI think of it as the sort of issue that brings people together because there are so many things to dislike about it. You may have some people who come to it from an environmentalist perspective, some who don\u2019t want this sort of external industry coming in without their say and some who are concerned primarily about affordability and electricity prices.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tGreen says it doesn\u2019t help the AI industry that people see data centers as something that will mainly benefit extremely wealthy tech companies, which weren\u2019t particularly popular even before they started shoving AI in everyone\u2019s face and, with data centers, into their physical communities.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat remains to be seen is how much this backlash against data centers will affect upcoming elections. The AI industry is pouring<\/a> a lot of money into elections already. Candidates from Virginia<\/a> to Wisconsin<\/a> are running against them. \u201cWe\u2019re dealing with the biggest companies on the planet,\u201d Virginia Delegate John McAuliff said<\/a> last year. \u201cSo we need to make sure Virginians are benefiting off of what they do here, not just paying for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGreen says he thinks it could become a defining issue, and people might decide to support or oppose a candidate based on where they stand on AI and data centers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think the effect might be more pronounced in certain states, or even regions,\u201d he says. \u201cI think people recognize this as a useful barometer of the types of commitments and priorities that politicians have. People very much recognize data centers as being about big industry against the local community. Understanding where a candidate stands on data centers is useful for understanding where they stand on representing the interests of regular people against the powerful lobby of tech barons and other industries.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSachs says she thinks it\u2019ll be a significant issue going forward in her state. Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner has already voiced<\/a> his support for a federal moratorium on data center construction, and Gov. Mills dropped out of the Senate race not long after she vetoed Maine\u2019s moratorium bill.\u00a0She was trailing Platner substantially in the polls.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\u201cI hope every Mainer asks their candidates about this issue,\u201d Sachs says. \u201cWhere do they stand? Where did they stand on the [moratorium] bill?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThis issue may become a litmus test for voters across the country. There appears<\/a> to be more opposition to data centers and AI on the left than on the right, but it is clearly something that people are concerned about regardless of their party. While Washington is dragging its feet on putting any regulations on the AI industry \u2014 and in the case of President Donald Trump, actively fighting regulation<\/a> of the well-moneyed industry \u2014 voters are making sure their local leaders know how they feel about what happens in their states.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hundreds of billions of dollars are flowing through the artificial intelligence industry and new AI tools seem to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":665492,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,2160,7258,74],"class_list":["post-665491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-controversy","tag-data-centers","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=665491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/665492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=665491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=665491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=665491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}