The Cost of Public Opposition to Data Centers
Brief #1 from the UVA NSI Data Center Opinion Monitor | Source: UVA NSI survey fielded June 7–8, 2026
June 8, 2026
Is Public Support For Sale? What Americans Would Charge to Accept a Data Center Next Door
When people think about what it takes to build a data center, they usually think of four material resources: energy, land, water, and network infrastructure. Our research introduces a fifth constraint, one that is often overlooked but increasingly decisive: public sentiment.
Tech companies will have to reckon with public opinion to keep expanding - and public support is shaping up to be costly and scarce. To what extent can public support be secured in the same way that a tech company would secure a water rights agreement? In other words, is public support for sale? And if so, how much does it cost? To find out, we conducted a nationwide survey of more than 3,200 American adults. First, we mapped the size and scope of public opinion toward data centers by asking participants to rate how they would feel about a data center being built near them, then describe their thinking in an open-response item. Next, we asked participants to name the price on their support.
Opposition is fierce. And it doesn’t map onto political party.
We asked a nationally representative sample of 3,234 Americans how they would feel about a data center being built in their local community. Two in three Americans (66%) oppose a data center being built in their local area, and less than 1 in 5 support one. This is a dramatic change from just as recently as 6 months prior to this survey, when a Pew survey reported 39% of the public in opposition to a local data center. A March 2025 survey documented only 29% opposition to a local data center, meaning that opposition has risen by more than 120% in just over a year.
66% of Americans oppose data centers in their local area.
Surprisingly, we find that opposition doesn’t follow the typical party lines. In today’s political climate, Republicans and Democrats agree on very little, but distaste for local data centers appears to be one of those rare points of consensus. Democrats lead the opposition and Republicans are somewhat less opposed, but across party lines, a majority of respondents oppose a data center coming to their community.
Across party lines, most people oppose local data center builds.
The same holds across age groups. Opposition runs high among young adults, but it isn’t limited to them: across generations, most people oppose a local data center.
Opposition unites across generations.
We also asked participants to rate how much each of five factors influenced their view: quality of life for local residents, local economic effects, AI development, environmental effects, and effects on local resources. The vast majority weighed all five, and that was true for supporters and opponents alike. In other words, people weren’t driven by a single concern; they were weighing many at once. Whether they support or oppose, data centers are a hot-button issue that brings a wide range of costs and benefits to mind.
Data centers aren’t a one-button issue.
Next, we asked an open-ended question about why people feel the way they do about data centers. We found that supporters tended to talk about the potential economic benefits and other civic opportunities. For opposers, concerns about the environment were most prominently on their mind. Among supporters, the three most common words were: jobs, community, future. Among opposers: water, resources, and environment.
Republican and Democratic opponents also used largely the same words to describe their thinking. That is striking: the two parties have disagreed on environmental policy for decades, yet opposition to data centers has them speaking the same language.
Opposition yields uniquely bipartisan agreement.
Is local support for sale?
Next, we quantified the cost of local opposition. We asked participants who said they did not support a local data center to register their required price - in the form of a one-time payment - to gain their support. The item was formatted as an open-response item, meaning that participants could write in any number that they wanted, as long as it was a real number. This is where the depth of opposition really came through: 22% of participants reported a price-tag above $1 million, 174 people registered a price above $1 billion, and 7% respondents reported that nothing could buy their support. Some answers were so high that they rendered the average meaningless, so we report medians instead.
Support might be buyable - but some won’t budge at any price point.
The median price required to buy opposers’ support was $10,000 in individual, one-time payouts. Scaled up to a median-sized county, buying support would cost a total of $240 million. And because the cost grows with every additional resident, the bill climbs steeply for data centers sited in larger counties.
Public support is costly.
While the median acceptable payment for a non-supporter to change their mind was $10,000, that increases as income increases: the median among those that make between $75K and $150K is $25,000; the median for the upper-class is $50,000. Which means that a data center seeking support in a more populated and wealthier county - such as in Southern California or Northern Virginia - would have to pay a much heftier payout.
The wealthier the opposition, the more their support costs.
Public support for the data center buildout can’t be taken for granted. It is scarce, and it is expensive. Two in three Americans oppose a data center in their community, and that opposition cuts across party lines and generations. It is also multidimensional: people weigh many concerns at once, from water and power to quality of life, so no single concession is likely to win them over. In some places, support may be for sale, but at a steep price that rises with population and income, and a meaningful share of opponents say no amount would be enough. For tech companies and policymakers, public sentiment belongs on the list alongside energy, land, water, and network infrastructure: it is a resource that has to be secured before ground is broken.
Data Center Opinion Monitor
A nation’s power is increasingly measured in compute, and compute lives in data centers. This brief is part of our ongoing Data Center Opinion Monitor, which tracks the American public’s support for data centers as they expand their footprint across the country.