Texans’ Opposition to Data Centers Aligns with Their Ambivalence Toward AI

While loud resistance to data centers in rural and exurban Texas has triggered the emergence of their construction as an issue in Texas politics this summer, the June 2026 UT/Texas Politics project poll illustrated that opposition exists well beyond the residents of less densely populated areas of the state. The blooming public discussion in Texas (as well as nationally) suggests many direct reasons for opposition to data centers, including anticipated higher energy costs, environmental concerns, quality of life issues, and objections to state-provided subsidies for data center construction and operation.  However, the latest UT/TxPP Polling suggests another likely contributor to Texans’ skepticism: their at-best mixed attitudes toward artificial intelligence (AI). The comparatively widespread awareness of AI as a public issue combined with ambivalent attitudes about the social and personal impact of its ongoing diffusion in many corners of daily life should be expected to complicate the suddenly incendiary topic of data centers. Elected officials, policymakers, and economic stakeholders in Texas’ data center boom appear to have been caught off-guard by the backlash to AI-driven data center construction. Earlier phases of data center construction associated with cloud-computing and, to a lesser extent, cryptocurrency, elicited comparatively little public pushback. 

But the emerging public reaction to increasingly ubiquitous AI complicates the state political leadership’s embrace of a de facto industrial policy that enthusiastically embraced hi-tech generally and data centers in particular – particularly in rural and suburban areas of the state that have supported that leadership at the ballot box. Linking the politics of data centers to broader, evolving attitudes about AI makes this issue particularly complex for elected officials and candidates navigating voter concerns.

Patterns in opposition to data center construction

As widely noted, the most recent Texas Politics Project poll found that only 29% of Texans support 'the construction of a data center in your community,' while a clear majority, 56%, are opposed. Beneath the surface of Texans’ lopsided opposition to data center construction lurk varying patterns of support and opposition among different social and demographic groups that bear watching as the issue develops.

Texans living in rural and suburban areas are more likely to express opposition to the construction of data centers in their communities than urban residents: 22% in rural areas support data center construction, while 62% are opposed – 50% strongly opposed. Opposition in the suburbs is only slightly lower but about as intense: 25% support data centers, while 60% are opposed (46% “strongly opposed”). Urban dwellers —who are less likely to encounter large-scale data center development in their densely populated neighborhoods with high land prices—expressed more closely divided views. – expressed more closely divided views: 36% support data center construction while 45% oppose it.

Texas Republicans are less likely to be opposed to the construction of data centers in their communities than are Democrats or independents, though Republicans remain closely divided: a slightly higher share, 44%, oppose data center construction compared to the 42% who express support. (Nearly a third, 30%, “strongly oppose” compared to 14% who “strongly support.”) Democrats and independents are aligned in their lopsided opposition: among the former, 15% express support while 71% oppose data centers; among the latter, 17% support and 62% oppose.

Women oppose data center construction more frequently than do men, with a striking difference between Republican women and  Republican men. A majority of Republican men, 52%, support data centers, while 38% are opposed (making Republican males one the very few subgroups expressing majority support); but half of Republican women, 50%, oppose data centers in their communities, with only 31% expressing support. Among Democrats, 76% of women oppose data center construction and 11% support them, while a smaller but still substantial majority of Democratic men are also opposed (64% oppose, 18% support). Among a group destined to emerge in election coverage, 18% of suburban women support data centers while nearly two-thirds, 65%, are opposed.

These demographic trends, while telling, only scratch the surface of the growing friction surrounding data center development. Below the surface, the groups most likely to oppose data centers express reservations or, more commonly, ambivalence toward  the technology driving the need for this construction boom: artificial intelligence.

On the same wavelength? Texas skeptical about AI benefits

Emerging patterns in attitudes regarding artificial intelligence suggest that Texans’ views of data centers are on the same wavelength as their decidedly ambivalent attitudes toward AI, the deployment of which is widely accepted as a major driver of the data center construction gold rush.

While the June poll did not include direct "why" questions for data center opposition, the alignment of negative sentiment toward AI with opposition to data center construction suggests some interaction among attitudes on the two subjects. 

A near majority of Texans (49%) expect AI to have a negative impact on the economy, while only 29% expect a positive impact. Economic pessimism is most pronounced among the same groups opposed to data centers, and similarly structured along party lines: 61% of Democrats and 47% of independents expect a negative economic impact from AI. Republicans are roughly evenly divided: 38% expect a positive impact, while 40% anticipate negative impact. 

Geographically, 55% of rural Texans and 54% of suburban Texans expect AI to negatively impact the economy, compared to only 36% of urban dwellers – another echo of patterns in attitudes toward data centers.

Nor are Texas voters sanguine about the impacts of artificial intelligence on aspects of their personal economic situation. When asked about the impact of AI on different individual economic aspects of their lives, half or more repeatedly anticipated either “no impact” or didn’t have an opinion. Among those expecting an impact, views were closely divided and titled in a negative direction.

About a quarter, 26%, expect AI to negatively impact their personal finances, while 23% expect a positive impact and 30% expect negative personal economic impact; 31% expect no impact and 1 in 5 (20%) don’t know. 

Among Republicans, more expect a positive impact (30%) than a negative impact (20%), while a third (33%) expect no impact and 17% express no opinion.Democratic views were roughly the inverse of Texas Republicans’ views: 18% expected a positive impact with 31% expecting a negative impact, while 28% expected no impact and 23% expressed no opinion.

Rural Texans were least likely to expect AI to have a positive impact (14%), while 30% expected a negative impact, the same as the share of suburban residents who expected a negative impact. A slightly higher share of suburbanites expected a positive impact (21%), while urban Texans were much more likely to expect a positive impact (32%), and least likely to expect negative impact (18%) 

Amidst widespread discussion of the impact of artificial intelligence on workplaces and labor, 23% of Texas voters expected AI to positively impact their “current work or job,” while 21% anticipated a negative impact. More than half expected either no impact (38%) or didn’t know (18%).

Republicans again expected more positive impact (30%) than negative (15%), while 41% foresaw no impact and 15% didn’t know. A smaller 18% of Democrats expected a positive impact, while 26% anticipated negative impact, with 36% expecting no impact and 20% expressing no opinion.

More than one third of urban Texans expect AI to have a positive impact on their current job, while 16% anticipate a negative impact, with 16% expecting a negative impact, and nearly a third expecting no impact (32%) and 16% expressing no opinion. In the suburbs, 18% expect a positive impact, 23% a negative impact, with the clear plurality 41% anticipating no impact and 19% expressing no opinion. Rural views are again comparatively negative, with 14% anticipating positive impact, 26% negative impact, and the plurality 

Looking to the future, 30% expect AI to have a negative impact on their career prospects, while 20% expect a positive impact. About a third, 34%, expect it to have no impact, while 16% have no opinion. (So once again, half of respondents don’t foresee a negative or positive impact on them at this point in time.)

Republicans were slightly more likely to anticipate AI positively impacting their career prospects (26%) than having a negative impact (22%), with 53% either expecting no effect (39%) or expressing no opinion (14%). Here, too, Texas Democrats’ attitudes were more negative on balance: 16% foresaw positive impact while 38% anticipated negative impact, while 31% expected no impact and 15% relayed no opinion.

Rural voters were least likely to expect a positive impact on their career prospects (12%), with suburban voters only slightly more optimistic (16%), and a plurality of urban Texans, 34%, expecting a positive impact.

Optimism about the impact of AI on career prospects was most prominent among younger Texas voters: 41% of those aged 18-29 expected a positive impact with 29% anticipating negative impact; only14% of the youngest age bracket expected no impact, while 16% had no opinion. Expectations of a positive impact decrease as age increases. 

This mixture of pessimism and ambivalence about the impact of artificial intelligence extends beyond economic considerations to assessments of the technology’s impact on personal well-being, where concerns again align among the groups who are also most resistant to data center construction. While urban dwellers and Republicans are more likely to see potential personal benefits in AI, rural residents and Democrats remain more wary. And all groups remain substantially ambivalent, with majorities reporting either “no impact” or holding now opinion in responses to questions about personal impacts of AI.

Asked about the impact of AI on “your mental health,” 19% expected a positive impact while slightly more than a quarter (26%) expected negative impact. 

Among Democrats, 34% expect AI to have a negative impact on their mental health (compared to only 15% who see a positive impact), while among Republicans, 23% expect positive impact and 19% foresee negative impact.

Expectations in different types of communities also follow familiar patterns: 27% of rural Texans anticipate a negative mental health impact, while only 16% expect a positive effect. In contrast, whole urban dwellers are more optimistic about the technology’s effect on their mental health (28% expect positive impact, 21% see negative impact). The suburbs harbor the most intensely net-negative expectations, where twice as many expect negative impact (28%) as expect positive mental health impacts from AI.

Similar divides emerge in views of how AI might affect Texans’ leisure and recreational time. A 35% plurality of Republicans expect AI to positively impact their leisure time,with only 13% anticipating negative impact. Democrats are almost evenly split between positive (21%) and negative (22%) expectations. 

Rural Texans are less likely to expect a positive impact (17%) than negative effects (22%), with 60% either expecting no impact on recreation (42%) or expressing no opinion. Urban residents are much more likely to see positive (39%) than negative (14%) impact, with suburbanites also expressing net-positive sentiment, albeit only slightly compared to urban Texans (24% positive / 20% negative). 

The pattern also holds for expectations regarding physical health. Urban Texans are significantly more likely to expect positive health outcomes from AI (33%) than are rural residents (21%)

Partisan patterns identification look familiar: 30% of Republicans expect a positive impact on their physical health (about half as many, 14%, expect negative impact), while among Democrats, only 19% expect a positive outcome and 22% anticipate a negative impact

Finally in terms of personal impacts, while the majority of all major subgroups view AI as having no impact on their personal relationships, the skeptical coalition of rural dwellers and Democrats again lead in negative expectations. Democrats (22%) and rural residents (19%) are the groups most likely to foresee AI negatively affecting their personal relationships

Conversely, Republicans are nearly twice as likely as Democrats to see AI as a potential benefit to their relationships (16% to 9%)

Public attention to AI and data centers

These results suggest that the lopsided opposition to data center construction among strange bedfellows (recall that 71% of Democrats and 62% of rural residents are opposed) is likely not only about the direct experience of these data centers. Because artificial intelligence is a primary driver of current data center planning, public sentiment regarding the economic, political, and policy implications of data centers will likely be shaped by the same attitudes toward AI described above.

Texans are clearly paying attention. The vast majority of voters have heard at least "some" in the news about both artificial intelligence (91%) and data centers (80%). The comparatively widespread awareness of AI as a public issue combined with ambivalent attitudes about the social and personal impact of its ongoing diffusion in many corners of daily life further complicates political calculations related to data centers

The depth of that awareness differs between the two issues and across different regions of the state. Texans are currently far more likely to say they have heard "a lot" about AI itself than the physical infrastructure that supports it: 61% of voters have heard a lot about AI, while only 39% say the same of news about data centers.

Geographically, news about AI is reaching Texans relatively uniformly across the state—with roughly 60% of residents in all areas hearing "a lot" in the news about it. 

The geographic pattern in reported exposure to news about data centers is less uniform, aligning instead with the locus of the recent high-profile pushback in rural areas – and the comparative prevalence of negative attitudes in those regions. Rural Texans are significantly more likely to have heard "a lot" about data centers (49%) than their urban (36%) or suburban (39%) counterparts.

AI, data centers, and state-supported economic development

The immediate pressure of electoral politics have focused Texas policymakers’ attention on pushback against data centers in rural and exurban Texas. But the public objections of rural residents to data centers and the hurried responses of Texas elected officials may be only the most immediate political effects of a deeper backlash rooted in more than just the physical presence of data centers. 

The mixture of skepticism and ambivalence coloring Texas voters’ expectations around the impact of AI on the economy, on their economic situations, and in their personal lives suggest a much deeper phenomenon than an outbreak of rural and exurban NIMBYism in response to the most recent wave of data center construction. While recent events leave little doubt that there is loud resistance in rural areas and small cities to data centers, skepticism about AI is a much broader phenomenon, and is likely feeding opposition to data centers among those who may have little or no direct experience with them, but who nonetheless link them to the propagation of AI and the corporate entities associated with them.

The governor and legislative leaders have been tapping the brakes on data center development in recent weeks, a move derided by their critics and election-year opponents, but hardly surprising given the rural locus of the backlash and the context of an election year. In addition to the AI-associated anxieties captured in polling data, Democratic campaigns seeking to tap into widespread economic discontent, anti-corporate sentiment, and the rising trope of “political corruption” are eager to talk about government support for Big Tech, with data center construction and AI playing starring roles.

Questions about how negative public sentiment may affect the economic model that defined the political economy of the state for the last two decades loom even larger than election-year responsiveness. Until relatively recently, the development of Texas as a home for the next wave of technology business expansion was widely presented by boosters, including the state’s political leadership, as the latest chapter in the triumphant tale of Texas economic development. State government has encouraged data center construction through state sales tax exemptions and other economic development incentives for more than a decade. Public sentiment skeptical of AI and opposed to the immediate economic and social costs of the infrastructure (at least currently) necessary to deploy it are likely to last far beyond the election, and have the potential to  trigger more conversation about governance and economic development policy in the state.