California voters oppose new data centers, poll finds

Por Chase DiFeliciantonio — POLITICO – TOP Stories

A majority of California voters oppose building new data centers in the state, and even more say they oppose putting one in their own community, according to a new poll by POLITICO and its partners.

The findings come as data centers have become a flashpoint in the war over AI — no more so than in California, the hub of the global tech industry.

Just over half of registered voters in the state — 51% — say they oppose building new data centers that power the technology, while about a quarter support the idea, the UC Berkeley Citrin Center for Public Opinion Research-POLITICO poll found.

Opposition grows stronger against data centers if one were to be sited in a voters’ own community, with 61% opposed.

“It’s clear that people have a desire for local control,” said Jack Citrin, a UC Berkeley political science professor and co-director of the poll.

Those attitudes reflect a broader rush of anxiety about AI both at the state and global level. And the data center findings suggest a deepening opposition not just to increasingly capable AI systems and the threats they represent, but to the server farms that underpin the technology.

The results land as politicians across the country and political spectrum begin to embrace curbs on their development. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, have been among them, while California Gov. Gavin Newsom has become more amenable to state oversight of AI factories this year.

The issue ranks near the bottom on the list of priorities for California voters overall. Only 3% of voters overall said data centers and AI were the most important issues facing the state, according to the poll.

And public opinion on data centers in California still breaks down starkly over party lines. A plurality of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents polled — 45% — said they supported new data centers going up in California, compared to only about an eighth of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents surveyed. Support shrank at the prospect of a data center being sited in their local community.

The not-in-my-backyard sentiment revealed in the polls is playing out in communities around the state, including San Francisco, Monterey Park, and Fresno, that have adopted or are considering bans on new data centers. The moves to block their expansion have accelerated despite warnings from the industry and tech advocates that they are critical for powering the state’s tech sector, which underpins much of the economy.

Those local initiatives may be just the start. The poll found voters across party lines favored local rather than state control when it comes to government oversight of data centers.

About 40% of voters said either the local government, or a mix of state and local officials, should have more authority over whether a large data center is built in a community. Only about one in 10 voters said California’s state government should have more power over the issue, a number which fluctuated only slightly when partisan leanings were factored in.

Much of the debate over data centers has centered on issues like noise and utility rates and the centers’ demand for power and water. Industry boosters have argued the facilities create jobs and power economic activity, including in more rural areas where space is at less of a premium.

The economic argument is resonating with rightward-leaning voters in California, the poll showed. Just more than half of Republican and Republican-leaning independents surveyed said they thought data centers were mostly good for local jobs, a sentiment only a fifth of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents agreed with. Some studies show that data centers do increase local employment, although they do not always spin off as many jobs as promised, and the staying power of those roles is disputed.

Opposition to data centers also registered in a concurrent survey of POLITICO’s audience of key political and policy influencers in the state, including political staffers, lobbyists, policy advisers and others deeply versed in California’s political landscape, with 45 percent opposed to building new facilities in the state. As with voters, opposition grew even larger to the idea of a data center in their own community, with 60 percent of influencers opposed.

These data come from parallel surveys of California voters and policy influencers, fielded by TrueDot, the AI-accelerated research platform, in collaboration with the Citrin Center at UC Berkeley and POLITICO. Interviews for the voter survey were conducted online in English and Spanish from Sept. 8-14, among a sample of 2,418 registered voters, including 1,983 likely voters, selected at random through Political Data Inc. and Verasight, with supplemental online panel recruitment. Voter results were weighted to California registered-voter benchmarks for age, educational attainment, race and ethnicity, gender, and geography, with additional calibration to 2024 presidential vote by region.

From Sept. 11-16, a parallel study was conducted in partnership with POLITICO among its audience of key political and policy influencers in California. The audience was defined based on job title and organizational affiliation and included state and local government employees, political staffers, lobbyists, policy advisers, consultants, business decision-makers and subject matter experts.

The margin of error is plus or minus 2.7% for the registered voter survey, plus or minus 3% for likely voters and plus or minus 4.5% for the influencers.

Fonte: POLITICO – TOP Stories