The data center backlash crashes into the midterms

I spent Memorial Day weekend in a beautiful corner of West Virginia: Tucker County, home to just 6,500 people, tucked away in a mountainous stretch called the Potomac Highlands. Over the past few decades, the entire economy of the former lumber and mining region has been fueled by a rise in outdoor tourism: mountain biking, hiking, and winter sports. Locals have done a remarkable job building trail networks and setting aside land for recreation, and the sister towns of Thomas and Davis are routinely ranked among the best places to visit in the state.

Today, though, the county is in upheaval over a data center project being pushed through with zero local input. Fundamental Data, a company out of Northern Virginia, plans to build a power plant and data center on up to 10,000 acres that would become one of the largest such campuses in the country. Locals had no say in approving the plan, and the Republican-controlled West Virginia legislature passed a law prohibiting localities from blocking data center construction. These days, you can't drive 50 yards in Tucker County without seeing a yard sign opposing the project.

What's unfolding in Tucker County is playing out in essentially every state and congressional district in the country, just as the midterm elections ramp up. Residents of rural and suburban communities, Republican and Democrat alike, are outraged by the prospect of increased air, water, noise, and light pollution landing in their backyard. 

Many of them are protesting and attending community meetings offline, but on social media, posts in opposition to data centers are flooding Americans’ feeds regardless of niche or interest. A Kentucky-based country singer received 640,000 views on one video opposing a data center in his hometown. A conservative Chamber of Commerce in Ruby Red East Tennessee received over 1,300 likes on a post opposing all data centers in their region. A rancher in rural Utah received a quarter of a million views on a video explaining the scale of data centers planned in his community. Even a January 6th rioter on TikTok received 3 million views on (conspiratorial) anti-data center content. I could go on and on…just in the past week I’ve seen viral posts from a local journalist in Nebraska, a realtor in Delaware, a historian in Indiana, a photographer in Maryland, and so many others. The David vs. Goliath struggle of small-town residents against multi-billion dollar investment deals makes for compelling content, and it's taking over Americans' local news feeds too.

I've monitored the online political space for over six years, and I've rarely seen what seems like a niche topic generate so much content from such a diversity of mostly non-political accounts.

Trying to quantify the spread of this content isn't easy, but a few data sources can paint a picture. According to new data from Magnitude Media, a progressive communications organization that tracks political content online, posts about data centers have surged in recent weeks. Magnitude's database covers over 10,000 leading political and political-adjacent social media accounts, so it won't capture the full universe of posts from lesser-known creators. Still, the numbers are striking: over 3,000 leading political accounts have posted more than 15,000 times about data centers this year, with a sharp spike in May. The overwhelming majority of them are negative or anti-data center. 

Those posts received over 700 million views and 45 million engagements — likes, shares, and comments — across major social platforms.

Magnitude's data shows that influential liberal accounts in the tracking sample were more than twice as likely to post about data centers as conservative ones. But some of the most viral anti-data-center content also came from the right. That includes posts from far-right accounts like Terrence K. Williams, the Hodgetwins, and @WallStreetApes. Just two weeks ago, Tucker Carlson took billionaire TV businessman Kevin O'Leary to task for his backing of an enormous data center project in Utah, generating a wave of clips.

O'Leary has pushed back, accusing many anti-data-center posters and activists of being paid by foreign billionaires or radical environmental groups. He's probably not entirely wrong — plenty of advocacy organizations want to block data center construction, and some are savvy enough to run creator marketing campaigns. But the sheer scale and breadth of the content out there argues against that being the whole story. On the other side of the ledger, an investigation by journalist Taylor Lorenz found that dark money groups tied to the AI industry are also running paid influencer campaigns, offering creators cash to reframe the debate around competition with China.

All of that activity is driving Americans' interest in data centers to new heights. According to Google, search interest in the topic is higher than ever, growing exponentially over the past year.

And when people learn more about the issue, they don't like what they see. Seven out of ten Americans now oppose data center construction near where they live, according to Gallup polling conducted in March, with 75% of Democrats and 63% of Republicans expressing strong or moderate opposition. Christabel Randolph, associate director of the Center for AI and Digital Policy, recently told NPR that it is now "a kitchen table issue" that is driving people to demand their elected officials respond. "Tech companies coming to build in their backyard is going to increase their bills…all of those things that ordinary Americans understand as impacting their affordability."

This issue is rising to the forefront just as the midterm elections come into focus, and campaigns on both the Right and Left are trying to weaponize Big Tech opposition to score points with voters. It's already starting to scramble our politics—look no further than this video that popped over the weekend, featuring a Texas Republican voter claiming that data centers will cause her entire community to vote Democratic this fall.

Now, that may be just one anecdote surfaced by a liberal media outlet, but this online anger is going to find some form of political expression eventually, whether this November or as the 2028 presidential race begins in earnest. It seems like some candidates on both sides of the aisle are already figuring that out.

The most unexpected example might be Rep. Nancy Mace, running in a competitive Republican primary for Governor of South Carolina. Mace has called for a one-year moratorium on new data center construction in the state, arguing that families and small businesses are being left to foot the bill for surging electricity demand. She's posted about the issue over two dozen times in the past few months.

In Wisconsin, State Rep. Francesca Hong, the leading Democratic candidate for governor, has also called for a moratorium on new data center construction until reasonable safeguards can be put in place. Further down-ballot, anti-data-center positions are more common still, from county commission campaigns to state legislative runs and utility board races. In just one example from North Carolina, a Vietnam War veteran ran for a county commission seat on an explicit anti-data center platform and unseated a four-term incumbent. 

But in the other key battleground races that will determine congressional majorities, some candidates haven't fully grasped the depth of voters' anger over the construction boom. Many Democrats are offering wonky, front-of-the-classroom policy positions: regulations, transparency requirements, and safeguards on utility costs. Michigan Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jocelyn Benson, for example, has called for "statewide standards and guardrails" and wants data centers to bear the costs of the infrastructure they require, rather than passing them on to ratepayers. She notably does not support a moratorium though, and it probably has nothing to do with the fact her husband works for a data center company. Mallory McMorrow, one of three Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate in Michigan, released a thoughtful “Data Centers Done Right” plan, that includes guardrails on energy use and requirements for union labor, but does little to stop the construction boom taking over rural communities. Similarly in Georgia, Jon Ossoff launched a federal inquiry into data centers' impact on Georgia power bills but has also stopped short of calling for a moratorium or pause. Those are all defensible policy positions for think tank staffers in Washington, but they may not be sufficient in a populist political moment.

On the Republican side, the dynamics are equally mixed, but in a different direction. Most congressional Republicans are staying aligned with Trump, who has made unregulated AI a centerpiece of his second term agenda. Pro-AI super PACs with major tech industry backing are planning to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in 2026 supporting MAGA candidates who oppose industry regulations. 

Here's the underlying problem: both parties are taking money from the industry they're being asked to regulate. Tech cash flows to Democrats through their establishment donor class, and to Republicans through Trump's circle of oligarchs, so the politicians best positioned to actually do something about this are the ones with nothing to lose — challengers, populist insurgents, and the occasional bomb-thrower (See: Nancy Mace). Meanwhile, voters are pretty angry and have already made up their minds. What happens when that anger finally has to go somewhere is a question neither party seems prepared to answer.

More reading on the politics of data centers:

In the Lone Star State, the battle lines have officially been drawn in what will be one of the most expensive U.S. Senate races in history. Last week, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who faced corruption charges and is in the midst of a messy divorce, emerged victorious in his party’s Senate primary runoff, besting incumbent Sen. John Cornyn. That means he’ll face off against Democratic rising star James Talarico this fall, and the mudslinging has begun in earnest. 

Within hours of Paxton's win, the right-wing media ecosystem threw everything it had at Talarico. Conservatives falsely claimed he was vegan, too "woke," potentially transgender, and almost certainly gay. The attacks came so fast and furiously that the haters couldn't keep their story straight — and within days, they had undermined their own narrative by revealing that Talarico wasn't gay at all, and in fact had a perfectly normal and attractive girlfriend he'd been keeping out of the spotlight. The opposition research operation managed to both out him and exonerate him in the same news cycle. Ouch.

For his part, Talarico's team has handled the opening stretch about as well as a Democratic candidate in Texas realistically can. He scored an early endorsement from the Houston Chronicle, has been raising money at a clip that's turning heads in Washington, has generated over a billion views on his social content, and dropped a detailed memo laying out his path to victory. 

And then there are the polls. A few early surveys show Talarico leading Paxton, which means Democrats are in for another cycle of Texas-sized hope—and likely heartbreak.