Dan Diorio, executive vice president of state policy and government affairs at the Data Center Coalition, an industry group that represents Google, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon’s AWS, defended the infrastructure as a job creator and economic driver.
“Recent polling data reinforces our view of the importance of continued efforts to better explain the role of the industry to the public through community engagement and stakeholder education, including factual information about the industry’s responsible usage of water and our commitment to paying for the energy we use,” Diorio said.
As the data center issue becomes more salient among voters, Democrats could use the moment to take a hard line on the infrastructure, while Republicans could risk ending up on the losing side of a populist groundswell.
“I think it’s right for the leaders to be stepping back from this to see how it develops on the ground,” said Brad Carson, a former Oklahoma Democratic representative and head of Public First Action, a super PAC network pushing for AI regulations. (That organization has no relation to POLITICO’s polling partner.) “But if you’re a Democratic politician, for better or worse, this is just catnip because it’s a question that divides the Republican base.”
In January, people who said they had voted for Harris in 2024 were split on the question of data centers: Thirty-six percent said they would support a data center being built close to their home, and 33 percent said they would not.
By July, 53 percent of Harris voters opposed building a data center nearby. Just 22 percent said they would support it.