As Trump pushes for data centers, voters in key midterm races say they don’t want them

An NBC News Decision Desk Poll found that 69% of respondents oppose building AI data centers in their areas, with 45% saying they “strongly oppose” the idea.

DES MOINES, Iowa — Dawn Vogel, a Republican county supervisor in rural Buchanan County, Iowa, doesn’t have a lot in common with the leading democratic socialists in Congress. But on this bit of policy they agree: Data centers are proliferating across the American landscape too fast.

Vogel voted earlier this year for a moratorium that temporarily bans data centers from setting up shop in her heavily Republican county, which favored President Donald Trump 63% to 35% in 2024. In Washington, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. — the nation’s two most prominent democratic socialists — have proposed a similar moratorium that would cover the entire country.

“I don’t think this is a Republican or Democratic issue,” Vogel said on the sidelines of the Iowa State Association of Counties’ annual conference here in late August, adding that she hasn’t talked to a single voter at home who wants data centers.

Dawn Vogel, a Republican supervisor in Buchanan County, Iowa, voted for a temporary moratorium on data centers in the county.Frank Thorp V for NBC News“It’s an issue of what’s the best use for the land, what’s the best use for our natural resources,” she said. “You can have all the data you want to in the world, but if you don’t have water to drink, you don’t have humans to use the data.”

That point of view places Vogel in a loose, but very large, populist coalition that is fighting the rise of data centers at the ballot box, with yard signs, in courts and at all levels of government as November’s midterm elections approach.