The odds are that if you are reading this and don’t live in an urban area in the United States, your community is wrestling with the data center problem. The four states with the biggest number of data center projects are Texas, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Georgia.
Three of these states are swing states, and it isn’t a coincidence that as data center construction booms, Democrats are making inroads statewide in Texas. But data center projects are virtually everywhere.
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Data centers have become the rare issue that unites voters of all stripes into a solid position of no. A study from Arizona State University found that data centers raise temperatures by as much as four degrees in the communities where they are located.
Residents have environmental and water concerns, and they worry about rising utility bills.
Data centers create few permanent jobs. Once a data center is up and running, each may only require 50-200 permanent employees. Research shows that data centers have no impact on wages in their area.
Putting aside AI’s impact on employment, data centers are resource-heavy infrastructure that don’t create large numbers of permanent jobs or raise wages.
Data centers also require a lot of space, which is why they are popping up in economically depressed rural areas, where they can be sold as development, but local communities aren’t buying it, and want the data centers stopped.
This is where Democrats have an opening and can win back working-class voters by taking a partywide stand against data centers.
Republicans have been able to woo working class voters by using culture war issues to create an us against them strategy. Whether it is transgender persons in sports, defunding law enforcement, or immigration, the basic strategy is the same. Someone else is attacking your way of life or taking your job.
When Democrats ignore these issues, they look like they don’t care and they lose, but research from the Center For Working-Class politics shows how Democrats can win back the working class.
Hint: It’s economics, stupid.