A new poll on data centers shows that less than 10% of the country views the facilities as a top-three political issue.
Just 7% of the 1,004 registered voters surveyed listed data centers as one of the three most important current political issues, while 12% listed artificial intelligence, according to a new survey released by the Rainey Center for Public Policy. The survey was conducted between Sept. 10 and 14, right after former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon quit his role and warned of the existential threat of AI, sparking a nationwide conversation about AI regulation.
Over half of survey respondents, 57%, listed “grocery prices, gas and household utilities” as the most salient issue, followed by 30% listing jobs and the economy, and 20% listing affordable housing. AI came in as the 13th-most salient issue, directly following energy costs and transgender issues in schools and sports. Data centers being built in communities came in as the 15th-most salient issue, behind cybersecurity.
The polling results come after a week of federal and state lawmakers debating how and whether to proceed with additional AI regulations in the face of calls from frontier AI lab leaders for guardrails on their own industry. Dario Amodei, Sam Altman, and Elon Musk, the CEOs of Anthropic, OpenAI, and xAI, respectively, each entered the fray last week to call for a national slowdown on frontier model development.
The conversations have added fuel to the fire about the debate over data centers happening in the midterm elections, as more 2026 candidates put out messaging on the topic in an attempt to appeal to local voters on the issue relevant in communities across the country.
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But national leaders remain largely divided on the issue, with politicians such as President Donald Trump calling on people to ignore the calls for new guardrails because of the United States’s AI race with China, as Congress mulls several options for regulating the industry.
In a question regarding what the top three priorities for lawmakers should be on AI and data centers, specifically, 48% of survey respondents answered “holding AI companies liable for harms,” while 38% answered that “data centers pay their own electricity.” Just 16% of respondents answered “pausing or slowing AI development.” One-fourth of respondents answered “staying ahead of China in AI.”
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
