President Donald Trump has positioned America’s artificial intelligence competition with China as a national security imperative, pushing to accelerate technology development and massively expand the data centers and power infrastructure needed to fuel it.
But a new CNBC National Economic Survey reveals growing political tensions under that agenda. While Republican voters broadly support advancing AI development, many oppose building the vast infrastructure needed to power AI in their own backyards.
Nearly 55% of MAGA supporters want companies to continue developing advanced AI while Congress works on regulation, while 27% of MAGA supporters support a moratorium. However, only 29% support locating a data center within 10 miles of their home, while 40% oppose it. Among all Republicans and Republican-leaning voters, not just those who support the MAGA movement, 24% say they support data centers closer to home.
Overall, 63% of voters do not want an AI data center located near them, and only 13% support it. Democrats lead the opposition, with 80% opposed to the nearby facility, compared to just 4% who support it.
That resistance is increasingly forcing President Trump and the fragile Republican congressmen who once championed data centers to recalibrate for a tough midterm election environment for the party.
“A lot of people are suffering from these data centers,” said Brad Carson, a former Democratic congressman from Oklahoma and co-founder of Public First Action PAC, an AI industry-backed political group that is pushing for stronger regulation and safety measures. “Also, people are clamoring for reasonable guardrails for AI, which will be difficult to overcome.”
The CNBC poll of 1,000 registered voters nationwide was conducted Oct. 14-18 by Hart Research Associates and Public Opinion Strategies and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points. The data center proximity question was asked of a half-sample of about 500 voters and had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.38 percentage points.
Read the full survey results here.
Politics has changed since the early AI boom, when Washington and Silicon Valley sold the technology as a path to investment, growth, and American dominance.
However, as ramp-up accelerates, its physical costs become impossible to ignore. Communities are competing with data centers over rising electricity rates, skyrocketing demand for electricity and water, noise, land use, and taxpayer subsidies. Coupled with concerns about AI-induced job losses, opponents now point to the facilities as physical symbols of who is benefiting from the boom and who is getting hit with the bill.
The industry rejects that framework.
“The data center industry delivers tremendous tangible benefits,” said Dan Diorio of the Data Center Coalition, citing jobs, investment and tax revenue, adding that operators are committed to “paying for the energy they use.”
But when asked what their biggest concerns are if Republicans retain Congress, 18% of voters surveyed cited failures to regulate AI and data centers. This number, along with continued military efforts in Iran, exceeded continued Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportations (15%), health care subsidy cuts (10%), and President Trump’s tariff extensions (5%).
Even among voters who want the Republican Party to stay in power, 17% cited weak oversight of AI and data centers, second only to failure to lower prices.
Republican strategists are taking note.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee warned AI companies in August that a data center backlash was threatening Ohio Sen. Jon Husted’s re-election, calling the issue a medium-term “back-and-forth” that could haunt politicians across the country over future projects, Axios reported.
As Ohio’s lieutenant governor in 2024, Husted helped announce a $10 billion expansion of Amazon Web Services, calling AI equipment “essential to America’s economic advantage.” Currently in a tight Senate race with Democrat Sherrod Brown, who has made opposition to data centers a campaign issue, Husted is stalling on a bill that would force large facilities to pay for their own grid and power generation costs rather than passing them on to residential ratepayers.
There’s a similar story in Texas. Less than a year after Gov. Greg Abbott hailed the state as a “center of AI development,” he suspended data center permits pending a review of their impact on the power grid and water and called for the end of the state’s tax incentives.
Trump himself has shown signs of political pressure. In a post on Truth Social on Wednesday, he said data center developers should pay financial “dividends” to host communities to generate their own electricity, arguing that local payments could turn unpopular projects into popular projects.
For now, Democrats hold a slight advantage in addressing this issue. 32% of voters trust Democrats to handle data center expansion, compared to 24% of Republicans. But 27% said neither party intends to do a better job than the other.
And a CNBC investigation shows that this skepticism runs deeper than local zoning. Overall, 52% of registered voters want a moratorium on advanced AI development until Congress passes safety regulations, compared to 32% who support moving forward with development to keep pace with China. Democrats remain far more cautious, with 70% supporting a moratorium, while just 18% support moving forward.
“The discussion has changed dramatically,” Carson told CNBC. “A year ago, a lot of people were saying, ‘Let’s not just regulate, let’s exempt companies from the normal rules.'” Carson said sentiment toward AI “has deteriorated significantly over the past six months.”
