The Political Backlash to Data Centers

I first noticed that the public was souring on data centers last autumn while browsing posts on a Facebook group dedicated to my hometown of Springfield, Illinois. While most posts barely get a dozen comments, breaking news that a new CyrusOne data center was being planned outside the city racked up almost 150 comments, nearly all against the build.

“We need to show up as a community and push back hard,” the October 2025 post read. “These data centers use huge amounts of electricity and water while the community foots the bill. And I’m sure they won’t have to pay for any of the infrastructure that will be needed or their fair share in property taxes either.”

Strong majorities, upward of 70 percent of voters, dislike data centers. And those numbers don’t vary much by political party, which has led to stable coalitions and political action.

Throughout the winter, I watched the conversation in Springfield as it curdled, paralleling a national trend. Data center opposition exploded this year with a 50-point swing over nine months. Strong majorities, upward of 70 percent of voters, dislike data centers. And those numbers don’t vary much by political party, which has led to stable coalitions and political action. New York state has implemented a moratorium on building data centers while Texas Governor Greg Abbott has ordered an audit before any new data center can connect to the grid.

The change in rhetoric across two hearings in Springfield mirrored what was happening nationally. In December 2025, the conversation was about energy, utilities, and cost. By March, the tone had become more accusatory. Speakers called the company’s presentation a “crafty bill of lies,” and the broader company “shady,” claiming it would “lie constantly” to get what it wanted. While December was about allocation, the March hearing was about health, air, and who can control daily life.

I’ve spent much of the past year researching data centers, talking to upset residents and curious politicians, and trying to understand why such a dramatic political wedge has been driven. Those two hearings in Central Illinois show the shift happening in real time. Once a conflict moves into identity and way of life, price and terms stop settling it cleanly. That’s the fight that happened in Springfield. It’s the same fight now playing out across the country.

The Big Picture

Public opinion has moved quickly against data centers.

Polling by Heatmap News offers the cleanest trend line. Using the same pollster and the same questions across four polls over the past year, it shows a massive collapse in support. In August 2025, 42 percent of respondents said they would oppose a data center being built in their community, while 43 percent said they would approve of it. But in the most recent Heatmap News survey, 75 percent now say they would oppose building a data center, with just 15 percent saying they would approve of such a project.

February 2026 marked a turning point. Even in December 2025, polling showed an even split among support, opposition, and uncertainty. But in February and March of this year, something turned. In these two months, Heatmap News, Echelon Insights, and Gallup each documented a turn toward opposition for data centers. Uncertainty turned into opposition, while support eroded. Today, opposition outnumbers support by 7:2 or 7:3, depending on the poll. A summary of those polls appears at the end of this piece.

Nearly every poll from December 2025 forward names rising electricity costs as the dominant driver of opposition, and it’s one of the few concerns that evenly crosses party lines.

Why are people so incensed? Nearly every poll from December 2025 forward names rising electricity costs as the dominant driver of opposition, and it’s one of the few concerns that evenly crosses party lines. But also top of mind are concerns about water, land use, distrust of who bears the cost, and a lingering unease about AI itself. My sense, however, is that those concerns largely depend on local history.

Springfield, Springfield!

To understand how this conversation was playing out on the ground, I transcribed two hearings conducted by the Sangamon County Board, with a widely used transcription tool. I then analyzed the transcripts to determine which words most often occurred and which were distinctive to each hearing.

However, to understand the two hearings, some context is needed.

All this started in October 2025, when the Illinois Times, a local outlet, broke the news that “A Dallas-based company is seeking zoning approval to establish a $500 million data center on 280 acres of farmland southwest of Springfield in what would be the largest building construction project in Sangamon County history.”

In December 2025, the county held its first big public hearing. It featured a presentation from the data center provider, CyrusOne; the advocacy organization, Coalition for Springfield’s Utility Future; and the county staff. Afterward, the public was allowed to chime in.

In March, a second large public meeting was held. Expecting a big crowd, the county booked a local arena, which was packed. The Illinois Times and at least one person claimed there were more than 700 people at the hearing, which featured the widest variety of commentary from interested citizens. Eventually, however, the county voted to table the decision to grant the data center a permit.

The real approval came in April in the same packed room, passing 17–10. More than 60 people had signed up to speak, but County Chair Andy Van Meter declined to waive the one-hour public comment limit and cast the tiebreaking vote to enforce it. As Dilpreet Raju of the Illinois Times explained, “The one-hour cap resulted in approximately a dozen public speakers, mostly union leaders or workers, sharing support for the project. Just three opponents of the proposal were able to speak during the shortened public comment period.”

At the December 2025 hearing, the top unique terms were energy, power, supply, demand, megawatts, utility, rates, and cost. Not all of it was in favor of the data center. Robert Hirschfeld, the director of water policy for Prairie Rivers Network and representative of the Coalition for Springfield’s Utility Future, worried that “if required transmission upgrades exceed estimates, the public could be forced to absorb the difference . . . In a brownout or emergency, who gets priority? Residents, farms, or the data center?”

But a representative from the local energy cooperative that would be powering the data center pushed back on these concerns, saying, “A lot of people have quizzed us . . . is this going to raise our rates? . . . If you’re a rural electric member, what happened to your rates? Nothing. Crickets.”

In March 2026, when the hearing allowed a wider public to comment, the vocabulary shifted dramatically. It moved away from energy toward health, noise, air, care, safety, family, and workers. Health alone jumped from six mentions in December to 55 in March, while noise nearly tripled in relative frequency. Enforceability language also became more prominent. Words like binding and guarantee nearly doubled. By March, residents were demanding commitments and elevating examples of broken promises.

In the open comment period for this hearing, one attorney argued, “your constituents have a constitutional right to a healthful environment and deserve more than minimal protection requirements being permitted.” One resident was concerned that “more and more communities are putting their health and quality of life ahead of the often unfulfilled or at least overstated promise of tax dollars being dangled in front of them by billionaire companies with no vested interest in them.” Another resident was clear, “I am no stranger to how these corporations see rural areas and are like, ‘oh, we’ll put this dangerous thing there. The people there don’t matter.’ And I think that’s disgusting.”

Several concerns remained constant throughout both hearings, including water, taxes, and property. To me, the consistency of these terms suggests that residents didn’t simply stop caring about them. Rather, these concerns stayed at a constant level while an entirely new bevy of issues over safety, trust, and belonging layered on top of them.

Credible Commitments

The political psychologist Philip Tetlock has a heuristic that can help explain what happened in December and March. He makes a distinction among three kinds of trade-offs. Routine trade-offs are apple-to-apples comparisons, like buying a car or hanging out with a friend. Taboo trade-offs mix the sacred with the secular. This is the kind of trade-off made when someone sells an organ for money. Finally, tragic trade-offs pit two sacred values against each other, like choosing which patient gets an organ.

December’s hearing was a fight over allocation and thus was largely about routine trade-offs. It was about who pays, who benefits, and how the costs land on ratepayers. Allocation fights can be cleared for a price. Maybe resolution comes in the form of a locked rate or a community benefit agreement. But the industry and energy companies are well poised to respond to these concerns. They can model the rate impact, correct misinformation about water use, and then move to offer benefits to help the project get passed.

But by March, citizens had moved past this point. At a minimum, they wanted binding commitments and penalties. But for many, not even that was enough. They were more concerned with health, lifestyle, and control over their way of life. None of these have a clearing price.

One such voice was Craig Hall, who represents District 7 of Sangamon County. As he explained, “I asked our board of trustees to our township, do we want to approach the company to see if there’s anything we could benefit? And I was really proud when they said, ‘we’re not for sale.’” To Hall and many others, building the data center was clearly a taboo trade-off.

Tetlock points to a way out of this bind. He argues that the central move in politics is reframing a taboo trade-off as a tragic one. You’ve got to pit one sacred value against another. Indeed, one member of the union did exactly this by explaining how many construction workers would be able to feed their families. But another resident sought to counter the maneuver and called abhorrent “the psychological gameplay of bringing all of our labor workers in here in order to try to put them against our communities.” A reframing only holds if the witness is credible, but that assumption was already gone.

When residents discount every claim, no concession or benefit will move them.

This pattern is not confined to Sangamon County. The writer Jasmine Sun has documented the same distrust across the Upper Midwest. As she wrote, “My conversations make me wonder if the technical content of data center deals is mostly beside the point. Closed-loop cooling systems? ‘I don’t believe them.’ Paying millions in taxes? ‘I don’t believe them.’ Creating a thousand jobs? ‘I don’t believe them.’ I hear a reflexive skepticism of every claim.” This goes beyond an erosion of trust: When residents discount every claim, no concession or benefit will move them.

A Final Word or Two

The April vote approving the data center in Sangamon County wasn’t the final word. In July, residents living roughly a mile away from the planned site sued Sangamon County and CyrusOne. The suit adds a fascinating wrinkle to the story. The complaint claims the approved resolution is dated March 23, the meeting when the project was tabled. On its face, a misdated resolution is a clerical slip. But it seemingly confirms the worst conspiracy theories, that the approval was decided long in advance and the public comment was for show.

Once the debate shifts into talk about whose way of life counts and whose word can be trusted, projects face a tough time getting approved.

While this case is particular to Sangamon County, the bigger story is not unique. Once the debate shifts into talk about whose way of life counts and whose word can be trusted, projects face a tough time getting approved. In April, Sangamon County had enough votes to get the data center approved. But it’s unclear whether the CyrusOne data center would be approved if this story were replayed. Sentiment has moved that fast.

What changed this year is that communities now frame data centers around questions about who gets to decide, whose promises count, and whose authority to trust. Not surprisingly, data centers face a legitimacy problem that no rate study, tax agreement, or engineering presentation can solve.

Will Rinehart is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.