People would rather have an Amazon warehouse in their backyard than a data center

As data centers have grown and spread, so have the backlash.

A new Harvard/MIT poll found that 40% of people support building a data center in their neighborhood, while 32% oppose when asked about building various industrial facilities in their neighborhood.

Interesting information from the survey, Per Axios: More people prefer to own an e-commerce warehouse.

Two-thirds of respondents to the survey of 1,000 people in November expressed concern about the construction of a new data center in their area. Pushing electricity prices higher. Concern for jobs and economic growth has helped boost the case for data centers, according to Axios — though that sentiment may be fading for most data center projects. Don’t hire too many people Once you turn it on.

Another poll, conducted last month and Published earlier this week By Quinnipiac University, I found much greater opposition to building data centers. This poll found that 65% of Americans oppose building an AI data center in their community. Only 24% of 1,397 American adults surveyed supported building one.

New polls suggest the data center debate is far from settled, and lingering discontent by this large segment of the electorate is likely to persist. And its extension to politics. Data centers were working quietly in the background, more or less. Not anymore.