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Politics

Exclusive: Americans Now Overwhelmingly Oppose New Data Centers Near Them

A new Heatmap Pro poll shows a rapid shift in public opinion since last fall.

Robinson Meyer •
06/02/2026
Data center protesters.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Americans have changed their minds about data centers. Decisively.

At least seven in 10 Americans would now oppose a data center being built near their home, according to a new Heatmap Pro poll, a record low that reveals a staggering shift in public opinion against the facilities powering the artificial intelligence boom.

The survey, conducted by Embold Research, finds that an outright majority of Americans are now strongly opposed to data center construction in their area. Young people, Democrats, and rural voters are more hostile to the projects, but they are broadly unpopular with Americans across geographic and political categories.

The new result reflects a rapid and profound shift in public opinion.

When Heatmap first asked Americans how they would feel about a nearby data center project last September, Americans were evenly split: 43% said they would support it, 42% were opposed, and 15% said they weren’t sure.

When asked the same question in February, Americans were more skeptical. Forty-eight percent said they would support a data center project or weren’t sure, while 51% opposed one in their area.

Now, 55% of Americans — an absolute majority — “strongly” oppose a data center project built near where they live, and an additional 16% are “somewhat” opposed. Only 21% of Americans would support a new nearby data center. The public has swung 49 points against data centers in just nine months, underscoring the heightened political salience of the facilities and the AI industry that they embody.

Other statistics suggest that the public’s skepticism of data centers is surging. At least 20 data center projects were canceled after facing significant public backlash in the first quarter of this year, according to Heatmap Pro data released last month. That is more than double the number that were canceled the previous quarter, the data shows.

The canceled projects from the first quarter wiped out more than $41 billion in planned investment and at least 3.5 gigawatts of electricity demand, according to the Heatmap Pro review.

Little wonder: The new polling shows that skepticism of data centers is widespread across all age groups, political parties, and regions of the country. Some 78% of Americans who said they voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 election would oppose a local data center project; so would 63% of Americans who reported voting for Donald Trump. And no region of the U.S. saw less than 69% data center opposition.

For the past decade, many political issues have polarized along urban and rural lines, with city dwellers lining up on the liberal side of an issue and rural voters trending more conservative. But the new poll suggests data centers may be defying that trend: Data centers are slightly more unpopular among rural voters than among other voters.

Americans in smaller communities were 54 points opposed, on net, to a data center getting built near their home — in other words, 73% opposed a project, while 19% supported it. Suburbanites and urban voters were 48 and 47 points net opposed, respectively.

Young voters are also strongly against data centers. Eighty percent of Americans ages 18 to 34 said they would oppose a new data center near where they live.

Republicans, non-white Americans, and people who did not go to college are slightly more supportive of data centers in their communities than the median, but even that left the developments at least 30 points underwater.

Just 5% of Democrats, by contrast, said they would “strongly” support a data center getting built in their area, with another 10% describing partial support. Sixty-three percent of Democrats would strongly oppose the project and another 15% would somewhat oppose it.

Five percent of independents would strongly support a data center in their area, with 11% somewhat in support. Seventy-two percent of independents would be strongly or somewhat opposed to such a project.

The Heatmap Pro poll of 4,118 American registered voters was conducted by Embold Research via text-to-web responses from May 15 to 28, 2026. The survey included interviews with Americans in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 1.6 percentage points.

Robinson Meyer profile image

Robinson Meyer

Robinson is the founding executive editor of Heatmap. He was previously a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he covered climate change, energy, and technology.

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