Voters want candidates to fight data centers
Data centers have become a focal point of the midterm elections.
Americans across the country have been pushing back against building new data centers for the past year or so, and it looks like this issue is not going away any time soon. As I wrote for Rolling Stone in May, this could become a defining battle of the midterms.
We've seen more evidence of this recently. According to a Heatmap poll from last month, 71 percent of Americans now oppose a data center being built in their community. The poll found that support for data center construction has drastically decreased across the political spectrum. This appears to be one of the more bipartisan issues out there.
A Guardian report from earlier this month detailed how voters are pushing back against data centers. One way they're doing that is by recalling politicians who don't take the right stance on this issue.
"In just May and June, voters in states including California, Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Oklahoma, Oregon and Texas launched efforts to recall elected officials over their handling of datacenter proposals," The Guardian writes.
There are multiple reasons why residents oppose these data centers. They range from increasing electricity costs to environmental concerns to opposition to the AI industry generally. It's also become clear that voters in many areas are quite upset about the damage data center construction can do to people's homes. This construction often involves the use of powerful explosives that send out shockwaves.
Many prominent Democrats are pushing back against data centers. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) have introduced a bill in Congress that would halt data center construction until industry regulations are created. Similar bills have been introduced in numerous states.
While Donald Trump is actively boosting the AI industry, Republicans across the nation see that voters are angry. Many of them are also jumping on the anti-data center bandwagon. A recent Bloomberg analysis found that dozens of Republican candidates are now running ads that highlight their opposition to data center construction.
Electricity prices have been high for some time now, and they're not expected to go down anytime soon. As I said, that's one of the driving forces behind this fight. These data centers use a huge amount of energy, and residents are tired of the costs of that energy use being passed on to them.
I'm not saying the data center issue will decide who controls the House or the Senate on its own, but it's clearly a significant concern for many voters out there. A candidate's stance on this issue may also signal something to voters: They might decide that a candidate who supports data center construction cares more about corporations than the people.
It'll be interesting to see how candidates take on this issue in the coming months and how their decisions affect their poll numbers. The AI industry is spending a lot of money trying to influence the midterms, so that'll likely also play a role here.
