Big Tech's data centers have become the most attacked target in midterm political advertising, with opposition outpacing supporters nearly 19-to-1 by October — and the energy and water costs hitting your household are exactly why.
Pew Research Center analyzed 20,751 political ads mentioning data centers that ran on Facebook and Instagram between January 1 and October 24, and the shift is stark. In January, 42 percent of those ads were supportive and 31 percent critical. By October, only 3 percent were clearly in favor, while 57 percent expressed opposition. Advertisers poured almost $12 million into data-center-related political ads in just the 90-day window from late July through late October.
Here is what the political class doesn't want to name directly: the same AI companies draining your local power grid and spiking your utility bills are the ones writing checks to protect their interests. The money flows from your electric bill straight into their lobbying operations.
The spending breaks down in a telling way. About 61 percent went toward ads that did not promote a specific candidate — the kind funded by advocacy groups. Of those, 56 percent opposed data centers and just 13 percent supported them. The remaining 39 percent backed specific candidates, with 72 percent of those promoting Democrats and 15 percent promoting Republicans. But here is the bipartisan tell: when candidates from either party addressed data centers at all, they were about equally critical. Pro-data-center messaging barely registered, appearing in less than one percent of candidate ads. Both parties have figured out that defending Big Tech's land grabs is a loser with voters.
The themes driving the backlash cut straight to kitchen-table concerns. Corporate involvement in data center development came up in 30 percent of all ads, followed by energy use and costs at 24 percent, environmental effects at 17 percent, and water usage at 15 percent. Nearly half of anti-data-center ads — 47 percent — raised concerns about corporate interests, whether tech companies or utility providers, roughly double the rate in pro-data-center ads. Anti-data-center ads were also far more likely to flag environmental effects and water usage. The one theme pro-data-center ads leaned on? Jobs — at 25 percent, compared with just 3 percent for their critics. When the best argument you have is a promise of employment, you are admitting the costs fall on everyone else.
States with competitive House, Senate, or gubernatorial races saw more spending, and states with more operational or planned data center facilities got hit harder — meaning the places bearing the infrastructure burden are the ones where the fight is loudest.
Breitbart reported on the Pew findings in full. The Chicago Sun-Times, for its part, ran a letters page about vaccinations and voter turnout that referenced data centers only in its URL slug — a telling editorial choice from a legacy outlet that would rather lecture readers about getting their flu shots than cover the AI buildout eating their power grid.
The open question: Big Tech needs massive amounts of electricity to win the AI race, and they will spend whatever it takes to keep the current flowing. The politicians have finally noticed that voters are angry. What neither party has done is explain who exactly is going to pay for the grid expansion — because the answer, as always, is you.
