Research ยท October 2026
Winning Local Support for Data Centers
Public opinion turned in 2026. What host communities ask now, and how projects earn approval.
Key Findings
What Changed, and What Wins Now
Eleven pages on national opinion, the opposition behind it, the five questions every host community asks, and what our own research in Utah shows about how these fights are won.
- 01
Most Americans now oppose a data center near home.
In August 2026, 75% of registered voters opposed one being built near where they live, up from an even split a year earlier.
- 02
Opposition is organized, and it is stopping projects.
Local groups opposing data centers more than doubled in six months, to 843, and at least 75 projects worth about $130 billion were blocked or delayed in the first quarter of 2026 alone.
- 03
Host communities ask the same five questions.
Water, power bills, noise, what the town gets, and who decided. The record now gives developers specific answers to each one; vague answers read as confirmation.
- 04
How a project is decided matters as much as its offer.
In our study of Utah, projects passed quietly where the county kept its authority and used it in public, and money did not buy peace where the process looked closed.
- 05
The fight forms where the press does not look.
In Utah, the organizer who mattered most never spoke at a meeting or appeared in the news in our records, and the playbook moved from county to county in under five weeks.
Sources: Embold Research poll via Heatmap News (August 2026); Data Center Watch, Q1 and Q2 2026 reports. Utah findings are from a CSC study of public sources. Full citations are in the paper.
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