Communities Across the U.S. Oppose Data Center Construction, Adding Uncertainty to Midterm Elections

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STAR Market Daily | Zheng Yuanfang | Editor: Ji Sheng | 2026-11-02 20:59

① A recent poll shows that American voters now tend to oppose "candidates who support data center construction." ② Amid public opposition, candidates for Senate from both parties have already shifted their campaign statements related to data centers. ③ Data shows that an executive order pausing environmental permit approvals for large facilities has already delayed nearly 1GW of data center construction.

STAR Market Daily, November 2 — The U.S. AI industry has encountered a new "headwind," as more and more communities are joining the wave of opposition to data center construction.

On Tuesday local time, 20 communities in the United States will vote on initiatives to pause/ban local data center construction, 13 of which are located in Republican-dominated districts. Joseph Hoefer, head of the bipartisan lobbying organization Monument Advocacy and chief AI officer, said, "A person can fully support the United States maintaining its lead in AI while also having reservations about how development and construction should be carried out in their own community. Therefore, it is difficult for (tech) companies to judge a community's views on data centers based solely on party affiliation."

A recent POLITICO poll shows that American voters now tend to oppose "candidates who support data center construction." This opposition also crosses party lines: among voters participating in the midterm elections, 36% of Republican voters and 65% of Democratic voters said they would oppose or strongly oppose the construction of a data center within 3 miles (about 4.8 kilometers) of their residence.

Because residents in many places have maintained high levels of opposition to data center construction, it has even affected the campaign statements of candidates from both U.S. parties regarding data centers.

For example, in the Ohio Senate race, incumbent Republican Senator Jon Husted and former Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown both previously supported data center construction, but as voters' attitudes toward AI data centers have become increasingly negative, both have begun to change their related statements.

Amid the wave of opposition spreading across the United States, data center construction faces obstacles in many aspects, including politics, regulation, supply chains, and the environment, and some projects have already been delayed as a result, for example:

In New Mexico, due to local resident opposition, blocked approvals, and power supply challenges, Oracle's $165 billion "Project Jupiter" faces delays, and the company is taking measures to try to avoid the high costs caused by the delay;

In Texas, Governor Greg Abbott has ordered an audit, causing projects applying to connect to the state's power grid to be delayed by an additional several months;

In New York, according to SemiAnalysis data, an executive order pausing environmental permit approvals for large facilities has delayed nearly 1GW of data center construction.

However, U.S. media outlet Axios pointed out that, as of now, local opposition and increasingly strengthened regulatory scrutiny are only localized bottlenecks and have not yet blocked the overall boom in U.S. AI infrastructure construction. Although there are more than 300 local construction moratoriums across the United States, data center construction is still advancing at an astonishing pace. Research firm SemiAnalysis estimates that new installed capacity of U.S. data centers may exceed 50GW in 2027.

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Cailian Press Statement: The content of this article is for reference only and does not constitute investment advice. Investors who act on it do so at their own risk.

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Communities Across the U.S. Oppose Data Center Construction, Adding Uncertainty to Midterm Elections

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