Voters Hate Data Centers. Officials Hold the Permits.

Seventy-six percent. That's how many respondents in CBS News exit polls from the November 2026 midterms said they'd oppose a new data center in their community. Democrats, Republicans and independents, all lined up on the same side, in big majorities, nationally. And yet the permits, the approvals and the moratoriums still sit in the hands of county executives, city councils and governors.

Who Gets Crushed

Taylor Frazier McCollum is described as an unemployed single mother who lives about a mile from the $5 billion Brightseat Tech Park, a hyperscale data center planned for the site of a former mall in Landover, Maryland. She didn't wait for permission to object. In June 2025, she launched a Change.org petition against it. The county had already given the project final planning approval in 2024, two years ago.

The petition got traction. That September, Prince George's County executive Aisha Braveboy issued a temporary moratorium on processing hyperscale data center permits, stalling the Landover project. Braveboy has repeatedly extended it, and it's now set to expire at the end of this year. The county council's July moratorium, a two-year pause on approving new data centers, applies only to new projects. It doesn't touch the one Frazier McCollum organized against.

Then came the backlash against her. NPR published a profile of her last Saturday, and The Washington Post ran one in January. The NPR profile drew a social media backlash. Reason, a libertarian outlet, wrote that "largely erroneous arguments about data centers' impacts on water use and electricity prices have spawned hundreds of moratoriums and killed off $260 billion worth of projects."

What They're Calling "Regulation"

In Massachusetts, a group called The Committee to Restrict Data Centers wants a 2028 ballot question, two years from now. It goes further than Gov. Maura Healey's September executive order, which requires developers to enter agreements with municipalities and to bring their own energy supply or cover costs. Under the proposal, a data center would need approval from two-thirds of voters in the host community, plus water-use plans and a power strategy that doesn't raise local electric rates. The campaign needs 80,000 signatures just to be considered.

Democratic state Sen. John Velis of Westfield backs it. "The completion and proposed construction of data centers around the state has caused local community groups to organize to either stop or delay new centers," he said. He listed the complaints he's heard from residents all over the state: electricity costs, environmental uncertainty, water usage, and "turbines that run 24 hours a day, that sound like jet engines."

Meanwhile, in Sutton, the town says groups affiliated with New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft have a plan for 10 buildings drawing 900 megawatts of power, with major tax benefits for residents. Industry groups dispute that data centers raise electricity rates and say the economic benefits and tax breaks can help with the affordability crisis.

In San Jose, Mayor Matt Mahan and councilmembers Pamela Campos, David Cohen, Peter Ortiz and Domingo Candelas said Thursday they'd introduce a halt on new land use approvals for data centers and other large-energy projects until the council votes on new standards, scheduled for Dec. 8, about three and a half weeks from today. Eleven data center applications are under review there. The proposed standards include 100% carbon-neutral electricity, a ban on open-loop cooling, the cleanest backup generators, ongoing noise, water and energy monitoring, plus prevailing wage requirements. The leaders promised "the strongest possible regulations not just approved, but implemented," and said letting projects slip through first "would be a profound betrayal to every San Joséan who helped shape them."

Notice the sequence. Residents petitioned and organized. Officials then moved, temporarily, with deadlines that expire and exemptions that protect projects already approved.

The Authoritarian Contrast

In China, none of this friction exists. A United Nations survey last year found as many as 80% of people there support data center construction. In Ulanqab, Inner Mongolia, as many as 30,000 workers have been brought in to build an AI hub. Experts cited by the Financial Times say data centers there get built at about one-fifth of the U.S. cost. "There is no opposition to data centers in China. It's never heard of," Henry Wang, founder and president of the Center For China and Globalization, told CBS News, "whereas in the U.S., it has become a huge movement against data center building in neighborhoods."

China also has more than double the power generation capacity of the U.S., and its firms' AI models are believed to be about six months behind U.S. competitors. That gap is the pressure point: a race measured in months, with the people who live next to the turbines left to petition for a pause.