Roughly 77 percent of voters nationwide are casting ballots against AI expansion.
By Catholics for Catholics
Republicans were not the only ones who had a bad day during the midterm elections. Data center developers also held a bad year at ballot boxes across America.
According to a story by the Epoch Times, on Nov. 3, many cities and counties held votes on more restraining rules for data centers. Six communities had already voted to pass similar ordinances prior during the year.
Composed, 38 local measures restricting data center development have now been carried, and six measures are leading, for a total of a minimum of 44 new roadblocks that developers will have to either circumvent or dodge by placing their data centers in other places.
The Epoch Times’ story says that only one community has voted for what Redbud Consulting’s Data Centers on the Ballot dashboard calls the allow side, with the camps broken down into “restrict” and “allow.”
Data centers lost 37 of 38 local ballot measures counted so far. Voters in 9 of 10 states rejected them on every measure, including all 21 in Ohio. Where vote shares have been reported, 70–87% voted against. https://t.co/AojqQa8IvC
— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) November 4, 2026
To gauge the situation, take one metric: the Pew Research Center found that the percentage of Americans who believed data centers were “mostly bad” for the environment surged from 39 percent in January to 54 percent in August.
About 60 percent of Americans also said that they do not want a data center opening up anywhere close to their neighborhoods.
Nevertheless, distrust of data centers has risen in tandem with the AI large language models and other AI applications that they power. Americans’ use of AI has surged and, lately, so has skepticism about an AI-powered future.
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