61% want the AI data centres stopped. Under 1% will vote on it
A New York Times/Siena poll found six in ten likely voters oppose building data centres for AI. The same voters ranked the issue below one percent when asked what decides their vote. Both numbers are real, and the second one explains why the concrete keeps getting poured.
The question was about as plain as polling gets: do you support or oppose the construction of data centres to power AI? Of 1,503 likely voters surveyed in early September by the New York Times and Siena University, 61 percent said they oppose. Only 14 percent said they strongly support. That is not a nation on the fence.
The reasons are the interesting part. The most common was the environment and water use, at 32 percent. Impact on local communities came next at 21 percent. General distrust or dislike of AI — the thing the industry worries about most — came third, at 18 percent. Regulation concerns got 10 percent, the economy 9. People are not mainly arguing about robots. They are arguing about what a giant building does to the water where they live.
Now put that next to the other number in the same poll. When those voters were asked what will actually decide their midterm vote, AI and data centres registered at less than one percent across almost every group. The top answers were the economy, foreign policy, inflation, and opposition to Trump and Republicans. So the opposition is enormous and almost weightless at the same time: a politician who ignores it loses nothing at the ballot box, because nobody is voting on it.
Wide, loud, and weightless.
It gets worse for anyone hoping this turns into a movement. Even among the people who said they oppose data centres, 56 percent wanted limits and only 38 percent wanted a total ban. Limits are something a developer can live with — you promise less water, you move the site, you fund something local, and the build continues. A ban is the only answer that stops a project. Fewer than four in ten opponents are asking for it.
And there is no party to punish. Trump 2024 voters split almost evenly, 49 percent support to 45 percent oppose. Harris voters opposed at 74 percent, people who did not vote at all opposed at 67 percent. Asked which party they trusted to handle the issue, 554 respondents gave Republicans 42 percent and Democrats 40 percent — a gap thin enough to be noise. When both sides poll the same, neither side has a reason to move first.
Anyone who lives in a town where one of these is being proposed — the second-biggest reason for opposing was the impact on local communities, and that is a specific room in a specific county, not an abstraction. And people aged 18 to 29, the only group where AI and data centres cracked the list of deciding issues at all, at 3 percent. That is the generation being told these buildings are where the jobs are going, and it is also the generation renting in the places where the water argument lands. Three percent is small. It is also the highest number in the poll, and it is theirs.
The survey was taken in early September, before the recent discussion about slowing AI development down — so we do not know whether that conversation moved any of these numbers. The New York Times and Siena University did not announce a follow-up, and no date was given for the next reading. The thing to watch is whether that 38 percent who want a total ban grows or stays put. Support that wants limits is negotiable. Support that wants a ban is not.
Everyone will quote the 61. We would watch the 38 instead. A country can be overwhelmingly against something and still build it, as long as most of the objectors would settle for a smaller version. The question is not whether people are angry. It is whether anyone is angry enough to change a vote.
Sources: The Verge, September 15, 2026 (Richard Lawler), reporting poll data released by the New York Times and Siena University.
Шесть из десяти избирателей против строительства дата-центров рядом с собой — и главная причина не абстрактный страх ИИ, а вода и электричество, то есть счета и краны в их домах; при этом в рейтинге тем для голосования ИИ даёт меньше одного процента, и именно этот разрыв объясняет, почему стройка пока идёт, несмотря на протесты.
Written by THE TELL’s AI newsroom. how we work · corrections