$45 million in campaign ads, one enemy: the building next door with no windows
Republicans and Democrats agree on almost nothing this year. They agree that data centres are making your electricity bill worse — and both sides are paying millions to say so.
Somewhere near you, or near someone you know, a company wants to build a warehouse full of computers. No windows, few workers, enormous appetite for electricity. It's where AI actually lives. And it has quietly become the one thing American politicians of both parties are willing to attack in exactly the same words.
NPR analysed political ad data from the firm AdImpact and found that since January, campaigns and outside groups have spent more than $45 million on ads mentioning data centres in this year's governor, House and Senate races. The split was almost even: over $22 million behind Republican candidates, more than $21 million behind Democrats. Same argument, both directions — too many tax breaks, electricity bills going up, someone needs to rein this in.
Political ad money is the most honest polling data there is. Nobody spends $2.5 million on a message that doesn't land. So when a Republican in Florida and a Democrat in Wisconsin buy airtime to say the same sentence about your power bill, that tells you what focus groups already found: the AI boom has stopped being an abstraction and started showing up in a monthly bill people actually open.
The numbers back it. A June Reuters/Ipsos poll found 77% of Americans are worried data centres are raising electricity costs. Two-thirds of Democrats and half of Republicans said they'd oppose one being built in their community. Mentions of data centres in ads went from a handful in January to 62 in June, more than 110 in July, about 164 in August. This isn't a slow trend. It's a curve.
For years the cost of the AI build-out was a question for investors. Now it's a question for voters — and voters get to answer it out loud.
Michael Franz of the Wesleyan Media Project, which tracks political advertising, explained why the issue fits both parties. Democrats can attach it to environmental concerns; for Republicans, attacking data centres is a way "to go in opposition to big corporations, in opposition to a system that doesn't care about you." He called it a rare issue where "MAGA Republicans and liberal Democrats" end up in the same place. The catch for the industry: when both sides win by running against you, there is no election result that helps you.
Anyone who pays an electricity bill and has noticed it climbing — especially people renting, where you eat the increase and can't fix the building. It touches people choosing what to study or where to move for work: the same facilities that push up rates are also pitched as local jobs, and an anonymous Republican operative told NPR the party line is that data centres are needed to beat China and "increase jobs in local communities." And it touches anyone living near a proposed site, who is about to discover their town council meeting matters more than the presidential race.
Watch Ohio. The National Republican Senatorial Committee, in an internal memo obtained by NPR and first reported by Axios, called data centres a "sleeper issue for the entire election cycle" and warned the tech industry that a loss by Republican Sen. Jon Husted would make politicians nationwide wary of them. Husted, who championed data centres as Ohio's lieutenant governor, is running against Democrat Sherrod Brown and isn't airing ads on the topic — but has introduced congressional legislation to protect ratepayers. That race is the test the industry itself has named.
President Trump has urged states to keep building, while admitting the facilities could "use a little public relations help." Brookings' Darrell M. West put it plainly: when the public shifts, politicians usually shift with them, and on this one Trump isn't. Everyone else already did the math on which way the wind blows. Watch who moves next.
Sources: NPR, "Voters are fed up with data centers. Both parties are trying to cash in for midterms," September 5, 2026; NPR analysis of AdImpact political advertising data; Reuters/Ipsos poll, June 2026.
Счета за электричество из-за ИИ-стройки стали первой темой, по которой республиканцы и демократы говорят одно и то же — $45 млн предвыборной рекламы против дата-центров показывают, что платить за бум придётся избирателю, и политики это уже поняли.
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