Ohio’s Data-Center Revolt Is Upending the Midterms

It’s not clear just how potent the issue will be at the polls in November. By themselves, data centers don’t rank as a top-tier national campaign issue, according to voters—in a recent Pew Research Center survey, the economy, the future of democracy, health care, education, and immigration made up the top five. But Democratic candidates have sought to connect data centers to many of those themes. They’re promising to ease affordability concerns by cracking down on high electricity bills through data-center restrictions, pledging to strengthen democracy by fighting Silicon Valley’s opaque deals to get facilities built, casting AI companies as puppet masters in an unequal economy, and painting their political rivals as corrupt leaders seeking to curry favor from powerful companies. This election cycle, $137.6 million has been spent on broadcast ads about data centers, with Democrats making up 77% of that estimated spending, according to the analytics firm AdImpact.