THE CRUNCH
Tech has turned into a ubiquitous villain of the 2026 US midterm elections, with more than 150 campaign commercials across the country focused on datacenters or the AI industry, according to Guardian reporting. In one Tennessee attack ad, a stream turns sludge-brown as concrete datacenters slam onto its banks, while a narrator accuses a Republican congressional candidate of writing the law that let the facilities take over the state. Both Republican and Democratic candidates are trying to convince voters that their opponents would put the unpopular facilities in people's backyards.
The stigma has even pushed prominent Republicans to break with Donald Trump's pro-AI line: Ken Paxton, campaigning for US Senate in Texas, has called for a slowdown, and in Tennessee Brent Taylor's own campaign ran a spot claiming he was tough on datacenters. The ads have sprung up alongside pro- and anti-AI political action committees that have collectively spent hundreds of millions of dollars. Super Pacs funded by tech billionaires are among the top spenders, with Leading the Future, formed by OpenAI president Greg Brockman and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, raising more than $75m, and Elon Musk putting $366m into Republican causes, more than he spent on the 2024 presidential election.
In total, the tech industry and its leaders have spent more than half a billion dollars influencing 2026 elections and ballot proposals. Yet polls show the economy, democracy and healthcare still rate as more important to voters than tech issues, even as the spending has pushed tech to the forefront of the campaign. It marks the first major test of how American voters will react to the AI boom.
The backlash is most intense where there is a physical target, and none looms larger than the sprawling datacenters at the heart of the industry's multitrillion-dollar infrastructure build-out. A Pew Research poll from last month found the share of US adults who believe datacenters are bad for the environment, energy costs and quality of life has risen across demographics since January, with only 4% thinking the facilities will be good for the environment or home energy costs. At least 20 candidates for governor are calling for datacenter moratoriums, according to policy tracking firm MultiState, and Brad Carson, head of pro-regulation group Public First Action, says datacenters are now a campaign question in nearly every race in the nation.