New Polling Shows 69% to 71% of Americans Oppose Data Centers Near Them as Funding Fight Erupts Over Who's Organizing the Backlash

Since CBS's 60 Minutes aired its data center special on Sunday, September 20, tracing the fight from Red Oak, Texas to Loudoun County, Virginia, two things have become clear. Americans across the political spectrum don't want these facilities near them, and there's now a genuine dispute over how much of that opposition is organic.

The Numbers

An NBC News Decision Desk survey of 7,105 adults conducted online from August 20 to September 1 found 69% of respondents oppose AI data centers being built in their area, according to Breitbart's reporting on the poll. Seventy percent said they're more worried about AI than excited about it, up from prior surveys, and 81% said the government isn't doing enough to regulate the technology.

A separate Gallup poll, cited by The Independent and described as having been released earlier this year, put opposition at 71%. Two different pollsters found roughly the same story: this isn't a fringe position.

Job anxiety runs through both surveys. In the NBC Decision Desk poll, 70% of respondents said AI is taking away job opportunities, versus just 7% who said it's adding them. That concern splits by party but doesn't disappear on either side. Seventy-eight percent of Democrats and 69% of independents worry about job losses, compared with 62% of Republicans, according to Breitbart's writeup of the survey.

What It Looks Like on the Ground

CBS's Norah O'Donnell traveled to Red Oak, Texas, where Marine veteran Jazmin Villegas has become the face of local resistance to a data center campus planned near her family's farm. "How do I know that these chemicals or this pollution, water, air, noise, isn't going to affect my community, isn't going to affect me?" Villegas told 60 Minutes.

The complaints track a pattern nationwide. In Loudoun County, Virginia, home to the world's densest concentration of data centers, electricity bills have surged over the past year, which CBS News reported is at least partly tied to growing power demand. In Chandler, Arizona, residents told CBS they're worried about water usage in a state with a shrinking supply. In Red Oak, residents accused the city council of approving projects without transparency.

Trump's Bet, and the Backlash to the Backlash

President Trump has pushed data center operators to pay for their own electricity and struck agreements with major tech firms on energy, water and community principles, according to the Daily Wire. He's also mocked opponents directly, calling resistance to data centers a "mistake" and telling critics, "If we kill the Golden Goose, you will only have yourselves to blame," as reported by The Independent.

The Daily Wire's own analysis argues Trump's vocal advocacy may have hardened opposition rather than softened it. It points to a Navigator poll from December 2025 showing a third of Democrats and 40% of independents were ambivalent about data centers, and a January Politico poll showing similar uncertainty. By July, per the Daily Wire's account of Politico's tracking, opposition had hardened considerably. The outlet draws a parallel to a 2013 poll in which 46% of Democrats supported a $46 billion border fence under President Obama, only for support to collapse to 11% once Trump proposed a similar wall under his own name.

The Funding Question

Fox News Digital reported that several groups organizing against data centers, including Public Citizen and the Sierra Club, have drawn financial support from progressive networks. Public Citizen lists George Soros' Open Society Foundations among its funders, and the Sierra Club received $3.6 million from Arabella Advisors' Sixteen Thirty Fund between 2014 and 2022, according to the outlet. It also reported that CodePink, which has targeted data center projects, has received funding tied to Neville Roy Singham, a socialist megadonor Fox News Digital says has ties to the Chinese Communist Party and has funneled roughly $285 million into six activist nonprofits.

Larry Behrens of Power the Future, a pro-energy advocacy group, told Fox News Digital the opposition follows "a playbook we've seen before" with the Dakota Access Pipeline, describing seemingly grassroots protests that are actually funded from outside. That documented funding is real. Behrens runs an advocacy group with its own stake in the outcome, and the money trail doesn't by itself explain why 69% of ordinary poll respondents, with no apparent tie to any advocacy group, say they oppose a data center in their own community.

A more serious and less-verified claim comes from The Independent, which cited a May 2026 Wired report saying federal agencies now describe data center resistance as "anti-tech extremism" under Trump's National Security Presidential Memo-7, which reportedly directs the Justice Department to scrutinize people who express "anti-capitalism" views. No sourcing here identifies any specific prosecution or investigation tied to that memo, and the scope of its enforcement remains an open question.

Public Citizen launched a petition on September 17 calling on Congress to "pull the plug on AI," casting the fight in the starkest possible terms. Whether that message resonates with the 62% of Republicans and 69% of independents who told pollsters they're also worried about their jobs will likely be tested at the ballot box this November.