Data Centers Unite Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon in Odd Bipartisanship

The U.S. House passed the Ratepayer Protection Act 417-3 in mid-September, a rare bipartisan landslide driven by voter anger over data centers. The bill requires states to consider adopting a policy that data centers pay for the grid upgrades needed to meet their outsized electricity demands.

The vote is the clearest sign yet that data centers have scrambled normal partisan politics. Opposition now stretches from democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders to right-wing strategist Steve Bannon, who appeared together at an AI summit in September. Barbara A. Trish, a professor of political science at Grinnell College, argues that data centers may be disrupting the partisan issue alignments Americans have grown to expect.

Organized resistance has spread nationwide through protests, packed zoning commission meetings, moratoriums and other government action. According to Data Center Watch, the resistance has upended dozens of proposed projects, including Amazon's contested plan in Walla Walla, Washington.

Why do data centers provoke such anger?

Data centers house the computing resources used to train AI models. They are also massive facilities with extraordinary energy needs. By 2030, U.S. data center electricity use is expected to reach 12% of the nation's total consumption.

The facilities carry real benefits. Nationally, they fuel computing power seen as critical to U.S. competition with China. Locally, they create jobs, especially during construction, and can generate tax revenue.

But ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, the costs — land consumption reshaping rural land markets, higher household utility bills, and environmental degradation documented in a Texas air-quality report — appear to outweigh the benefits for many voters.

How wide is the partisan gap?

On most issues, the gap is huge. Pew Research Center data shows 63% of Democrats call climate change a very big problem, versus 14% of Republicans — a 49-point spread.

Data centers look different. In summer 2026, the Annenberg Public Policy Center asked Americans whether they support data center construction in their communities. Majorities in both parties opposed it: 69% of Democrats and 54% of Republicans. The partisan gap narrowed from 18 points to 15 over just four months.

Attitudes toward AI more broadly follow the same pattern. Majorities of both parties feel AI is developing too fast, though Democratic concern runs 22 points higher. On government keeping AI under human control and protecting U.S. workers, the gap shrinks to 4 points — with support hovering around 80%.

What happened on the ground?

The bipartisan mood has produced concrete alliances. New York's No Data Center FLX organized protests, sued the local zoning board of appeals and collected almost 23,000 petition signatures against a proposed data center in the Town of Lansing, which moved to draft a ban.

Zoning fights draw disparate coalitions: environmentalists, households reeling under high electricity costs, local-control advocates, and farmers worried about land loss — all united against projects backed by powerful corporate interests.

Congress reflected that alignment, but only partly. The three House votes against the Ratepayer Protection Act came from progressives who argued the voluntary structure did not go far enough to protect consumers. Comparable sentiment killed the Senate version — a reminder, as Trish notes, that even allies follow different strategic paths: some accept incremental progress, others push for sweeping change.

What role is Trump playing?

Candidates up and down the ballot are blanketing airwaves and digital channels with ads against data centers, part of what AdImpact calls a quiet boom in data center advertising. President Donald Trump has pushed back, suggesting that data center opponents want their communities to be "backwards and poor."

That puts some Republican candidates in a bind between responding to voter concerns and not alienating the president.

Is this coalition durable?

History suggests skepticism. In the 1990s, opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement united organized labor and environmentalists — frequent adversaries — over job losses and pollution. That alliance never extended beyond its singular focus on trade agreements.

Trish expects the same fate here. Data center politics may dominate the 2026 midterms, but the coalitions it assembles are unlikely to permanently reshape the U.S. political landscape.