All year we have followed communities pushing back on data centers reaching for their water and power. New polling shows those communities are not outliers. Skepticism of data centers has become a broad, bipartisan American position, and it is only sharpening.
What the new numbers say
An Economist and YouGov poll conducted at the end of August found that nearly two-thirds of Americans would oppose a data center being built in their area, and that many believe data centers are bad for the country overall. A separate study from Public First and the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation went further, ranking data centers as Americans’ least favored form of local development, behind solar farms, wind farms, and just about everything else people were asked about.
That second study also pinned down something advocates have suspected. When pollsters separate the kinds of data centers, the picture splits. Americans support building more data centers for storing government records, online banking, video streaming, and photo storage, often by double digits. But when the question turns to data centers built to train artificial intelligence, that support collapses into a divided, wary public. The letters “AI” change the answer.
It is mostly about the bill, and the trust
When people are asked what specifically worries them about data centers, the top answer is almost always the same: electricity costs. Communities see enormous new power demand landing next door and reasonably ask who pays for it. That concern is tangled up with a broader unease about AI itself and a deep distrust of the big tech companies driving the buildout, firms many voters believe hold outsized sway over their elected officials.
Why this matters for our watersheds
For water advocates, the polling is more than a curiosity. It tells us that when a community raises the alarm about a data center drawing on its rivers and straining its grid, it is voicing something most of its neighbors already feel, whatever their politics. The energy and water questions we have been asking all year, how many gallons, from what source, and who pays, are exactly the questions the public wants answered.
Public opinion is a resource, the same way a healthy stream is. Used well, it can move local officials toward transparency, real community benefit agreements, and protections for the water we all depend on. The numbers say the will is there. The work is turning it into policy.
Polling findings from the Economist and YouGov (August 28 to 31, 2026) and Public First with the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (August 2026), as compiled in the Environmental Polling Consortium’s weekly roundup. Figures reflect those sources.
