DATA CENTRES have become a political bogeyman. Voters worry about congested power grids that could eventually push up utility bills and the broader impact of artificial intelligence. Our analysis of polling data suggests Republican strategists have a more immediate concern: these projects appear to be turning their voters blue.
Republicans are struggling nationally. But for voters living within 2km of a data centre the veer to Democrats has been even sharper. This analysis could reflect who lives near data centres, rather than the effect of the centres themselves. So we built a model that predicts how respondents to our survey would vote based on their demographics. We found little difference in responses up until May. But the message isn’t landing with his own supporters.
We matched almost 150,000 respondents from the Economist/YouGov weekly survey with their nearest data centre, using Compute Atlas, an open-source repository of such sites. Since then the share of voters planning to support a Democrat in November’s midterm elections has risen from 54% to 61% among those living within 2km of a data centre. Across the country the rise has been from 53% to just 55%. Around 17% of people living within 2km of a data centre who voted for Mr Trump in 2024 now say they would support a Democrat, compared with 6% of his voters elsewhere (a calculation that excludes undecided and third-party voters).
President Donald Trump has warned that places opposed to data centres risk becoming “backwards and poor”.
