Data centre backlash emerges as undercurrent in US midterm results

A voter poll conducted around the US midterm elections indicates that data centres became a strikingly prominent issue for many Americans, prompting debate over whether public resistance to the artificial intelligence infrastructure building boom may have influenced the outcome. BBC Verify examined the role the issue played in the campaign and what the results could mean for the AI industry.

The poll, carried out for AP and a consortium of news organisations, found that 56% of surveyed voters described data centres as a "crucial or major" factor in how they cast their ballots, while 76% said they would oppose a new data centre being built in their community. The hostile sentiment was considerably stronger among those who said they voted Democrat.

The findings align with recent Pew Research polling suggesting roughly half of Americans now consider data centres "mostly bad" for the environment, household energy costs and quality of life, a marked deterioration in favourability since January. Still, the issue ranked well behind other concerns voters called crucial or major factors, including government corruption at 90% and the cost of living at 89%.

Questions have also been raised about whether the backlash shaped Senate races. The three seats flipped by the Democrats are in states with far more data centres than the national median of 55: Texas has 595, Ohio 258 and Iowa 117. Texas alone has 31 ongoing construction projects, the most of any state. Yet BBC Verify analysis of state-level polling suggests states that swung to the Democrats either tracked the national trend on data centre concerns or appeared less worried about them, so it is not possible to say how many votes or seats were directly delivered by the opposition.

What stands out is that three states central to the US AI build-out, Texas, Georgia and Ohio, all elected Democratic senators and governors who have advocated tighter regulation of data centres. Their proposals include temporary bans on construction, ending tax breaks, requiring operators to fully cover their own energy and water infrastructure costs, mandating the use of unionised construction workers, imposing stricter environmental and transparency safeguards, and granting local communities veto rights.

The stakes are significant for the wider economy, which has been propped up in recent years by vast corporate investment in AI. Official data shows inflation-adjusted monthly spending on data centre construction, excluding IT hardware, reached $5bn (£4.2bn) in August 2026, five times the level seen in 2023. Analysis by Columbia Business School suggests AI infrastructure investment now represents a larger share of the US economy than railway spending did at the height of that 19th Century boom.

Cori Crider, executive director of the Future of Tech Institute, a European think tank, told BBC Verify the industry should expect new state leaders to attach conditions to or "even stop runaway data centre build". Seema Shah of Principal Asset Management warned that demands for developers to fund electricity grid upgrades, meet tougher standards on resources such as water, or surrender tax incentives could "raise development costs and slow new supply".

Others expect a softer landing. Heather West of the Eurasia Group consultancy said temporary bans and new rules might delay the roll out but not halt it, noting that "projects already permitted or under construction will largely proceed", while the "next wave" of building faces "local fights, slower permitting, and pressure to make data centres pay for their own power". Oxford Economics analysts added that tax revenue and construction jobs give politicians strong incentives to avoid severely disruptive policies, and Deepak Surana of the Futurum Group predicted "a negotiation, not a moratorium" from Texas leaders aimed at protecting residents' energy and water bills.

The industry already appears to be responding. OpenAI, which operates a data centre in Texas and has projects under construction in Ohio, pledged on Thursday, one day after the midterm results, to fully cover the cost of its own electricity.