Seven in Ten Americans Oppose Local AI Data Centers, Gallup Finds — More Than Ever Opposed Nuclear Plants

More than 70% of Americans oppose the construction of AI data centers in their communities — a level of local resistance that now exceeds the historical peak of public opposition to nuclear power plants, which never climbed above 63% even during the most contentious years of that debate. According to a Gallup survey conducted across March and April 2026, the AI infrastructure boom is colliding with an increasingly skeptical American public, and the consequences for tech companies racing to build out capacity could be significant.

Janet Mills Veto and the Jobs Defense

The most politically revealing data point may be the partisan breakdown. According to The Verge AI, which reported on the Gallup findings, opposition among Democrats reached 75%, with independent voters close behind at 74% and Republicans at 63%. That cross-partisan resistance makes data center siting a genuinely difficult issue for elected officials — and illustrates why Maine Governor Janet Mills recently vetoed an 18-month moratorium on new data center construction, choosing to emphasize job creation over constituent concerns. Among survey respondents who do support data centers, 55% cited employment opportunities as their primary justification.

Resource Strain Drives the Backlash

The Gallup methodology involved two overlapping cohorts: a March 2026 survey of 1,000 randomly selected adults drawn from all U.S. states and Washington D.C., supplemented by an April 2026 survey of 2,054 members of the Gallup Panel. Among opponents, half identified energy and water consumption as their foremost objection — reflecting a growing awareness that large-scale AI training and inference facilities are among the most resource-intensive industrial installations built today. A separate Pew Research survey published earlier in May found that 43% of Americans consider data centers a “major reason for skyrocketing power bills,” reinforcing the Gallup findings from a different methodological angle.

Quality-of-life degradation, pollution concerns, and general skepticism toward AI itself rounded out the opposition rationale.

Why This Matters

The AI industry’s infrastructure ambitions — tens of billions of dollars in announced data center investment from companies including Microsoft, Google, and Amazon — are running directly into a public sentiment problem that zoning boards, state legislatures, and utility commissions will be forced to navigate. The fact that opposition now exceeds the historical ceiling for nuclear plant resistance is not merely symbolic: nuclear faced decades of organized legal and regulatory delay rooted in far smaller public majorities. If data center opposition hardens into organized local action, site acquisition timelines and permitting costs could rise materially, particularly in water-scarce regions where resource arguments resonate most. Teams evaluating data center location strategy should treat community opposition as a quantifiable risk factor, not a communications afterthought. The cross-partisan nature of the resistance — spanning Democratic, independent, and Republican voters — also limits the political cover any single administration can reliably provide.