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Did a data centre revolt affect the US mid-term election results?published at 08:39 GMT
Ben Chu, policy and analysis correspondent
A US midterms voter poll has suggested data centres were a highly motivating issue for many Americans, leading some to argue public backlash against the artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure construction boom might have helped shape the election outcome.
The poll for AP and a consortium of news organisations found 56% of surveyed voters said data centres were a “crucial or major” factor in their vote, while 76% said they would oppose the construction of a new data centre in their community.
This follows other recent Pew Research polling, , externalwhich suggested about half of Americans think data centres are “mostly bad” for the environment, home energy costs and quality of life, a big deterioration in favourability since January.
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Three of the Senate seats flipped by the Democrats have significantly more data centres, external, Texas (595), Ohio (258) and Iowa (117), than the median of 55 across all 50 states. And Texas alone has 31 ongoing data centre construction projects, the most of any state, external.
But other factors would also have been motivating voters in these states, as elsewhere.
BBC Verify analysis of state-level voter polling for Senate elections suggests states which swung to the Democrats either followed the national trend over data centre concerns, or seemed less concerned. So we can’t say how many votes or Senate seats were directly delivered by data centre opposition.