President Trump took to Truth Social this week to warn any town still weighing whether to fight a data center. Communities that turn them away, he wrote, are choosing to be “backwards and poor.” The ones that welcome them will get lower taxes and jobs “all over the place.” He called the industry the “Golden Goose,” said plenty of other places would happily take the investment instead, and warned that China “could not be happier” watching American towns turn it down.
He’s not wrong: Data center spending has become one of the single largest forces holding up U.S. economic growth this year. That’s normally the kind of growth that a president looking to maintain party control of both chambers would want to campaign on. But instead, it’s become one of the few issues in American politics that Republicans and Democrats can agree on, and what they agree on is that they simply don’t want it near them. With just four months before the midterms, no candidate wants to touch the issue with a 10-foot pole, and if they do, they’re spending millions in campaign funds to get the issue “right.”
Why data centers are so polarizing
Few issues cut across party lines the way data centers do, because what makes them valuable nationally is what makes them hated locally. One facility can draw as much power as a mid-size city and remake a town’s tax base within months, and neighboring households bear the costs. Conservatives who normally favor deregulation are showing up at town meetings over property rights and distrust of distant tech billionaires. Progressives who favor the technology’s economic promise are objecting on environmental grounds. A CNN analysis found the backlash is bipartisan because the fight is so local, meaning it skips past national ideology.
It also comes with an economic argument. In the first quarter of 2026, AI-related computing infrastructure investment hit roughly 1.4% of U.S. GDP, up from 0.7% a year earlier. It’s now the largest driver of growth in U.S. private investment, according to Epoch AI. The St. Louis Fed found information-processing equipment made up 39% of total GDP growth through the third quarter of 2025, a bigger share than during the dot-com boom. Data centers’ dollar contribution to GDP growth had passed consumer spending for the first time ever, which is remarkable given consumer spending typically makes up about two-thirds of GDP.
Construction is real and large: a $10 billion campus in Lebanon, Indiana employs more than 4,000 workers at the height of the build. But once the servers are running, that project keeps around 300 permanent employees—13 construction jobs for every one that lasts. A typical data center supports fewer than 200 local jobs long-term, Fortune reported, citing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Research from Virginia, the country’s biggest data center market, found projects there create one permanent job for every $54 million invested, according to a MinnPost fact-check; across the broader economy, $1 million in investment supports 17 jobs on average. Data center construction rarely produces a lasting rise in local employment, Fortune has noted, which helps explain why the tax breaks used to attract these projects have drawn bipartisan scrutiny: at least 10 states are losing more than $100 million a year in revenue from data center tax incentives alone.
The case for jobs
As the industry continues to contribute to a growing share of U.S. GDP, its physical footprint in the country is growing with it—as is the backlash against it. Part of the sentiment behind that opposition isn’t just about power bills: it’s about jobs disappearing because of the same investment.
Nearly 200 economists and researchers warned in July that AI could cause large-scale job displacement over the next decade, calling it a transformation on the scale of the Industrial Revolution but compressed into a much shorter span. And the same companies pouring billions into data centers have kept cutting jobs elsewhere: Microsoft laid off nearly 5,000 people in early July even as it continued pouring billions into AI data centers. For plenty of voters, that looks like the same industry taking jobs away with one hand while promising them with the other.
For their part, the industry points to the very real spike in construction jobs: a $10 billion campus in Lebanon, Indiana, employs more than 4,000 workers at the height of the build. But once the servers are running, that project keeps around 300 permanent employees—13 construction jobs for every one that lasts. A typical data center supports fewer than 200 local jobs long-term, per the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Research from Virginia, the country’s biggest data center market, found projects there create one permanent job for every $54 million invested. Across the broader economy, $1 million in investment supports 17 jobs on average.
Data center construction rarely produces a lasting rise in local employment, which is part of why the tax breaks used to attract these projects have drawn bipartisan scrutiny: at least 10 states are losing more than $100 million a year in revenue from data center tax incentives alone.
Swing-district fights
Pennsylvania’s governor’s race shows how fast the politics can flip. Last year, Gov. Josh Shapiro was the industry’s biggest booster, touting a $20 billion Amazon commitment in the state. By August, he’d signed an order stripping its fast-track permits and requiring local approval. His Republican opponent, Stacy Garrity, is now running to his left, attacking the Amazon deal in her first TV ad and accusing him of trying to “gaslight” voters. The same fight is playing out in Ohio and Texas.
In Ohio, Democrats are attacking Sen. Jon Husted over his record courting the industry as lieutenant governor, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee has warned the issue could cost him his special election, with private polling showing a dead heat against Sherrod Brown, per CNBC. In Wisconsin, Republican Tom Tiffany calls his Democratic opponent “Data Center David Crowley.”
In Georgia, data center opposition and rising electricity rates helped Democrats flip two Public Service Commission seats last year, and the party is betting the same anger carries into the governor’s race, where Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms backs a moratorium and Republican nominee Rick Jackson opposes one. U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock has called for a statewide pause, while Gov. Brian Kemp said that decision belongs to local communities. The fight has reached down to state legislative races too: one Democratic challenger southwest of Atlanta says lifelong Republican voters in her district have told her data centers changed how they see every other issue.
Where affordability and data centers collide
A July Pew survey found the cost of living is the top issue voters want candidates to address. Groceries, gas, and housing all feed that anxiety, but electricity is the cost voters can trace to one specific, unpopular neighbor. Utilities requested more than $30 billion in rate increases last year, hitting 81 million Americans, and power bills have risen 40% since 2021—the fastest stretch on record. Data centers drove about half of all US electricity demand growth last year, and PJM’s independent market monitor has tied data center demand to $23 billion in customer price increases through 2028.
For this story, Fortune journalists used generative AI as a research tool. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.
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