Data centres are turning Trump voters into Democrats | World News

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. 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. 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. 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%.President Donald Trump has warned that places opposed to data centres risk becoming “backwards and poor”. But the message isn’t landing with his own supporters. 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).Relatively few Americans live near a data centre. But in some places the trend could be decisive. In Nevada’s second congressional district Teresa Benitez-Thompson, the Democratic candidate, is running advertisements on the topic. In Colorado’s fourth district the Democrat challenging Lauren Boebert, the Republican incumbent, wants data-centre operators to pay for new energy infrastructure; in Ohio’s 15th the Democratic candidate supports legislation to put stricter conditions on where data centres can be built, and to give locals a bigger say. Unlike the president, they are happy to embrace NIMBYish concerns.