Seventy-five percent of Americans now oppose the construction of a data center near where they live, according to a survey published by Heatmap News. Of those opposed, 61 percent chose "strongly opposed." Heatmap News journalist Robinson Meyer, reviewing the results, calls the change "a swift, massive shift."

A picture that inverted in twelve months

What makes these numbers meaningful is that the same question was asked at regular intervals across a full year. In August 2025 opinion was almost evenly divided: 43 percent in favor, 42 percent against. Opposition first reached a slim majority in February 2026. Over the intervening period it climbed by more than thirty points.

Swings of that size are rare in public opinion research. If this were a single poll, measurement error would be worth arguing about. But a Gallup poll conducted in May 2026 found 71 percent opposed and 48 percent strongly opposed. Two independent surveys point the same direction.

The concerns are about bills, not abstractions

The three issues respondents raised most often were these:

  • Local power costs — how the load a data center puts on the grid shows up on household bills.
  • Water use — how much cooling systems draw from regional water supplies.
  • Land use — the footprint of the facilities and their effect on surrounding neighborhoods.

The composition of that list is worth noting. None of the three has anything to do with artificial intelligence itself. People are not debating what the models do, whose job they take or what data trained them. They are debating the electricity bill, the water in the well and the empty lot at the edge of town. The opposition is growing on infrastructural ground, not ideological ground.

A campaign issue now

One of the survey's more striking findings is that data centers now rank above racism and Israel as a campaign issue. A category of infrastructure most voters could not have named a few years ago is now counted among the topics that shape how they vote.

Breakdowns by party and by urban-rural split appear in the full Heatmap News report. The critical point is that the opposition does not sit in one political camp: reaching 75 percent requires voters from both parties to have moved the same way.

Why it matters

The AI industry's growth plan depends on new data center capacity, and where that capacity gets built is decided by local permits, zoning decisions and elected officials in county buildings. A reversal this large and this fast suggests the sector's binding constraint may not be chip supply or capital, but permission. A 75 percent majority against a facility is a number that carries weight in a town council meeting.

One thing the survey does not measure deserves mention: respondents are not saying they oppose data centers in general, but that they oppose one being built near them. That distinction makes the industry's problem political rather than technical, and political problems are not solved by building a better cooling system.