Rarely talked about as a campaign issue in the last round of mid-term elections in 2022, the debate over real and proposed data center construction is proving an animating force in this year’s contests.
In Michigan’s 7th Congressional District candidate William Lawrence won in the Democrat primary based largely, as he has candidly admitted, on his opposition to new data center projects.
In Ohio, Republican gubernatorial nominee Vivek Ramaswamy is calling for a moratorium on all new data center construction in the Buckeye State. In a statement, Ramaswamy said the top concern he is hearing from residents, “second only to property taxes,” is what he called the “accelerating pace of data center expansion.”
In Alabama, Democrat gubernatorial candidate Doug Jones has proposed a one-year data center construction moratorium. In an interview with the publication Politico, Jones said the concerns among voters regarding data centers are not fanciful. “They’re real and they’re being heard in communities across the South.”
The issue appears to be increasingly galvanizing voters with a survey by the polling company Public First showing that in January 36% of respondents said they would support a data center being built in their local area, and 28% expressing opposition. The same question asked last month showed a dramatic upheaval with 24% now supporting the construction of such facilities, and 41% in opposition–a 13% gain for the anti-side in just half a year.
The same survey additionally showed that the anti-sentiment appears to be somewhat bipartisan with 53% of those who voted for Kamala Harris in 2024 now in opposition to new data center construction, up from 27% in January; while the 26% those who cast their ballots for Donald Trump in 2024 and said earlier this year that they were against such facilities has grown to 33%.
One of the reasons the issue has become so important is because the pace of data center construction has quickened. According to the Pew Research Center there are now some 754 planned data centers in the South, 419 in the Midwest, 277 in the West, and 106 in the Northeast.
Ongoing anxiety over continued data center construction, contends the site Business Insider, has made the issue the subject of campaign ads across the country, “and a populist fervor that’s toppled local elected leaders.” But the truth is, says the publication, “neither party knows how to handle their political fallout heading into the midterms.”
And that oppositional fervor doesn’t necessarily always equate with success. On Tuesday, voters in Wisconsin narrowly defeated state socialist lawmaker Francesca Hong in her bid for the Democrat gubernatorial nomination after a campaign in which she called for a statewide one-year moratorium on the future construction of data centers.
Hong’s defeat may have had more to do with past controversial statements in which she expressed, among other things, her dislike of Thanksgiving. Even so, headlined the publication The Intercept on Wednesday: “Francesca Hong’s Loss in Wisconsin Is a Win for Data Centers–For now.”
August 13, 2026
By Garry Boulard
Photo courtesy of Pixabay
