OPINION:
Two of the best opinion researchers in the political world, Tony Fabrizio and John Anzalone, joined forces a few weeks ago to conduct a survey of 1,800 registered voters examining Americans’ basic attitudes toward data centers.
I encourage everyone to read this batch of American Infrastructure Alliance survey results, because they are interesting and granular.
It will not surprise you to learn that people like lower electricity rates — or simply avoiding higher electricity rates — lower property taxes, peace and quiet, clean water and more spending on their schools, roads, broadband, etc.
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They especially like all those things if someone else — in this case, data centers — is paying for them.
The survey dutifully memorialized those preferences and noted a strong preference among voters for formalizing the promises made, either through state regulation or through a contractual commitment requiring data center planners to provide these goods.
For example, 64% favor allowing data center construction if a company commits in writing to meeting its own electricity needs, protecting utility ratepayers from rate increases and ensuring that water and environmental resources are protected.
Unfortunately, 31% of respondents view the issue through a maximalist lens and want a total ban, regardless of the concessions offered. I guess it is good news that it is just 31%, but I cannot help but wonder why one-third of registered voters are opposed to the data centers that bring their videos, football games and betting markets to their fingertips.
As we have noted elsewhere, 25 billion texts are sent each day. Each minute, 500 hours of YouTube are downloaded on this planet. We watch 2 billion hours of YouTube a day. Half of American households and a shade less than 90% of workers are already using artificial intelligence.
Also, unfortunately, data centers may become part of the blue-red divide. The survey found measurable differences between Democrats and Republicans on whether bans on data centers might give China a competitive edge, limit new jobs, send investment elsewhere and compromise yet another generation of skilled labor.
Republicans were more concerned than Democrats about each of those possible outcomes.
That is not surprising. Republicans start off much more positive toward data centers, with 49% in favor and just 35% opposed to the building of data centers in their state. On the other hand, 72% of Democrats oppose building data centers in their state; just 16% favor it.
At the same time, the survey focuses on the concessions and giveaways that are most likely to make voters — including Democratic voters — more receptive to hosting data centers in their neighborhoods.
From an opinion research perspective, survey work such as this is invaluable. It delineates, with some specificity, what voters care about, the intensity of that sentiment and the likely direction of travel of an issue.
On that score, among the most interesting results of the survey is the discovery that folks are mostly concerned about data centers because of the potential effects on their towns rather than whatever parade of horribles people can imagine and market about AI.
That, coupled with the long list of free things that voters want from data center builders, should tell you a lot about the contours of this contest. Rather than worrying about the eschaton, most opponents of data centers seem to be just waiting for a better deal.
The other thing worth noting is that the survey, at least the part that I read, missed an opportunity to help improve the current framing of the issue. Knowing what concessions may be necessary to build a data center is useful, but it stops short of capturing the core and essence of the question before us.
That question is: Are we still willing to do the things necessary to be the singular commercial, industrial and technological power on this planet? Or, like our European brethren, are we going to be content to live on past glories?
That is the essential and central question of this entire conversation.
• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor at The Washington Times.
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