When Americans cast their ballots in the recent midterm elections, a surprising issue appeared to weigh on many minds: data centres. According to a voter poll conducted for the Associated Press and a consortium of news organisations, 56% of respondents said data centres were a crucial or major factor in their vote, and 76% said they would oppose the construction of a new data centre in their community. The sentiment was particularly strong among those who voted for the Democratic Party.
A Growing Concern
This marks a significant shift in public opinion. Just months earlier, Pew Research polling indicated that about half of Americans viewed data centres as mostly bad for the environment, home energy costs, and quality of life. That represented a sharp deterioration in favourability since January. While data centres may not have been on most Americans' radar five years ago, they have now become a salient issue, especially in regions experiencing a construction boom driven by artificial intelligence infrastructure.
However, data centres still lag behind other pressing concerns. In the same poll, government corruption (90%) and the cost of living (89%) were far more likely to be cited as crucial or major factors. So while the issue is notable, it is not yet a top-tier motivator for the broader electorate.
Key States and Political Shift
Three Senate seats flipped by the Democrats are in states with significantly more data centres than the national median of 55 per state: Texas (595), Ohio (258), and Iowa (117). Texas alone hosts 31 ongoing data centre construction projects, the most in the country. But BBC Verify's analysis of state-level voter polling suggests that these states either followed the national trend on data centre concerns or were even less concerned than average. This makes it difficult to quantify how many votes or Senate seats were directly influenced by opposition to data centres.
Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that three key states in the US AI build-out, Texas, Georgia, and Ohio, all elected Democrats as senators and governors who have called for tighter regulation on data centres. These regulations include requirements for developers to cover their own energy and water infrastructure costs, mandates to use unionised construction workers, and stricter environmental and transparency safeguards.
Economic Stakes
The US economy has been heavily supported in recent years by massive corporate investments in AI, including data centre construction. Official data shows that inflation-adjusted monthly spending on building data centres, excluding IT hardware, reached $5bn in August 2026, five times higher than in 2023. Analysis by Columbia Business School suggests that AI infrastructure investment in the US is currently larger as a share of the overall economy than spending on new railways was at the height of that boom in the 19th Century.
Cori Crider, executive director of the Future of Tech Institute, a European think tank, told BBC Verify that the industry should anticipate new state leaders putting conditions on or even stopping runaway data centre build. Seema Shah from Principal Asset Management warned that requirements for developers to pay for additional investment in the electricity grid, meet tougher standards over their usage of resources like water, or give up tax incentives could raise development costs and slow new supply.
However, Heather West from the Eurasia Group consultancy said temporary bans and new regulations might delay the data centre roll out but would not stop it entirely. She noted that projects already permitted or under construction will largely proceed, but delays would affect the next wave of building through local fights, slower permitting, and pressure to make data centres pay for their own power. Analysts from Oxford Economics also pointed to strong economic incentives for politicians to avoid policies that would severely disrupt data centre construction, citing tax revenue and construction jobs.
Deepak Surana of the Futurum Group, a technology research firm, expects a negotiation rather than a moratorium from Texas state leaders to ensure no negative impact on residents' energy and water bills. OpenAI, which has a data centre in Texas and under-construction projects in Ohio, pledged on Thursday to ensure it fully paid for its own electricity, one day after the midterm results.
