Political earthquake: Conservatives turn against data centers

Some of us remember where we were when the earthquake struck Louisa County in 2011, shaking buildings across much of Virginia and beyond.

You might want to write down where you are because there’s another earthquake happening right now, and it’s rearranging the political terrain beneath our feet. Conservatives turn against data centers

We’ve seen anecdotal evidence of this before, but now we have statistical evidence in the form of the latest Commonwealth Poll conducted by Virginia Commonwealth University. We now have a rare political event: the union of left and right.

The growing liberal skepticism, and sometimes outright opposition, to data centers is more understandable: data centers have environmental consequences, with water and energy use, and the environmental community is centered on the left. However, we are now seeing growing conservative opposition — even though data centers create jobs and tax revenue, two things that typically motivate pro-growth conservatives. The opposition is so intense that we now see a much rarer political phenomenon: conservatives who accept higher taxes.

While we can see what’s happening, we don’t know where this will lead — but the political realignment in data centers has the potential to cause some tensions within the Republican coalition between pro-business and anti-data center factions, just as it has led to tensions within the Democratic coalition between Gov. Abigail Spanberger, who has to promote Virginia as a good place to do business, and the more progressive types, who don’t take that responsibility.

Enough of the summaries without numbers; Let’s dig into the data.

We’ll start with a 2023 poll conducted by The Washington Post and the Schar School at George Mason University. To my knowledge, this was probably the first Virginia-specific survey question about data centers. Respondents were asked whether they support or oppose tax relief for companies that “create at least 1,000 jobs” with data centers: 61% said yes. (This seems to be a very high number for job creation because data centers typically create much fewer.) The numbers for Democrats and Republicans in the poll were about the same; This never happens. There was support for this tax break across Virginia, though it was slightly lower in the northern Virginia suburbs (55%) that were beginning to feel data center encroachment than in the western part of the state (68%), where anything that promises jobs usually gets a positive reception.

How strong was support for data centers at that time? That’s powerful: Statewide, 69% said they would be comfortable if a data center were built in their community. This support ranged from 58% in the northern Virginia suburbs to 79% in the western part of the state. Based on these numbers, it’s no wonder local officials feel empowered to look to data centers as an avenue for economic development. With these numbers, it would almost be a mistake not to do so.

Earlier this year, the Washington Post Char School conducted a poll again, and this time the results were very different. When the poll asked about tax breaks for data center companies that create at least 1,000 jobs, it found that Virginians were now completely opposed: 68% support dropped to just 37% and opposition rose from 31% to 56%. Despite the risks of using another number, Virginians have conducted 180 tests on data centers in just three years.

Previously, people were united despite political differences. This poll found that opposition was higher among Democrats than among Republicans. Democrats who previously supported the tax break now oppose it: 61% said no. Republicans were more mixed, with 50% supporting it and 48% opposing it. This is still a shift, but it is clear that Democrats are leading the opposition. However, when the poll looked at regional breakdowns, it found that every part of the state now opposes the tax break — even in West Virginia, which was previously the most supportive: 53% there said no.

Opinions have also changed about whether people are comfortable having a data center in their community. Statewide, 59% said no. On this question, every region in the country said no. A small majority of Republicans also said no, while Democrats were more emphatic.

This is all done in the background. Now we come to the latest Commonwealth poll. Different questions, but close enough to allow us to make some comparisons.

In this poll, tax-break support for data centers dropped to 25% — even if they “create jobs and stimulate economic development,” as the poll question put it. The opposition rate now stands at 69%. This support is lower, and opposition higher, than we saw in the PostShare School poll near the beginning of the year, suggesting that opposition to data centers is growing.

This may not be a huge revelation to anyone looking around Virginia these days, but what’s notable is how conservatives are now the ones leading that opposition — it’s the rising opposition on the right that has pushed these numbers up. The Commonwealth poll found 73.1% of Democrats opposed, certainly higher than the 61% found by the Post-Share School poll earlier in the year. However, the Commonwealth poll also found that 68.6% of Republicans opposed it, compared to 48% in the Post-Share School poll. While Democrats once led the opposition, it is now Republicans who are pushing the “opposition” numbers up. This goes completely against the party’s traditional “pro-business” instincts.

Why do conservatives oppose data centers? We can guess a lot of things, but they will be just guesses; The poll can’t give us a definitive answer, so I’ll leave that for you to discuss. What we can say with more certainty is where a lot of this conservative opposition to data centers is coming from: the mostly western part of the state.

On the one hand, this seems obvious, as this is the Republican norm these days. If Republicans are changing their minds about something, it’s likely because rural voters are changing their minds.

Rural voters, on the other hand, typically support things that create jobs — and while data centers may be relatively small job creators compared to other industrial facilities of their size, they do create jobs that may be in large numbers in a small community. Because data centers vary in size, it is risky to quote a “typical” number, but the minimum to qualify for this tax break is 50 employees, with the number reduced if the facility is located in an “economically distressed” area, of which there are few at present. Google’s data center project coming to Botetourt County has talked about 300 jobs; The Stack Infrastructure Project in Pittsylvania County has pledged at least 2,500. (Disclosure: Google is one of our donors, through the Google News Initiative, to the New River Valley Expansion. Donors have no say in news decisions; see our policy. You can become a donor and have no say either.)

Republicans have been slower to oppose tax breaks for data centers, but they’re there now, putting a majority of voters in both parties in the same place. Over the course of this year, any increased opposition to data centers has come primarily from Republicans; The Democrats were already there, but it was the Republicans who changed their minds.

The Commonwealth poll found that opposition to this tax break in the western part of Virginia was 63.5%, compared to 25% just three years ago. In this previous poll, Post-Schar found that support in the western part of Virginia for this tax break was 68%; Now this support has decreased to 31.4%. This represents a complete reversal of opinion. Technical note: The two polls may define their districts differently, but West Virginia is so large geographically that I think it’s OK to make this comparison just to illustrate the point. Once upon a time, the western part of Virginia clamored for data centers because they would provide jobs and tax revenue; Now maybe not so much. We can’t say with certainty that West Virginia doesn’t want data centers; We can only say that the region is against tax incentives. These are two different things — but they are intertwined, especially if getting rid of this tax incentive means sending data centers to other states, which seems entirely possible in a dynamic, mobile economy. We have certainly seen vocal opposition emerging in Botetourt County and Wythe County to data center projects there, as well as opposition to the mere prospect of data centers in Amherst County, Franklin County, Wise County and elsewhere.

When was the last time there were movements in rural counties to deny jobs and tax revenue? What makes the opposition in Botetourt County and Franklin County so interesting is that these projects (actual project in Botetourt, potential in Franklin) are zoned for commercial/industrial parks. These are not cases where data centers took farmland out of production or collided with housing developments, as we saw in Northern Virginia. This land has already been taken out of production. (In the case of Botetourt, which acquired the Greenfield Center land in the mid-1990s, the choice was either to build a mall or see that land turned into a residential development.) However, we are now seeing opposition to a very particular form of business.

What’s even more interesting is that we now see conservatives embracing the tax. The Commonwealth survey asked whether data centers should be required to pay “surcharges to offset electricity demand.” Granted, the question didn’t use the word “tax,” but that’s what a “surcharge” is – a tax on electricity consumption. This is what Governor Abigail Spanberger has proposed and the General Assembly recently decided to do. Statewide, 78% of those surveyed in the Commonwealth poll supported this; This is a strong mandate for one of Spanberger’s signature policies.

When we break down the numbers, we see that 88.1% of Democrats support these “surcharges” – not a surprise to me – while 69.1% of Republicans support them. Finding 69.1% of Republicans support a tax increase, even if the poll doesn’t call it that, seems astonishing. Overall support in the western part of the state is lower than elsewhere, but even there 69.2% support these fees/taxes.

It’s unclear where all this is leading, but it seems politically notable that there is now a clear disconnect between grassroots Republicans and some of their leaders at the national level. Some Democratic leaders — from Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez nationally to 6th District congressional candidate Beth Macy in Virginia — have called for a moratorium on data center construction. This may or may not be wise from a political standpoint, but it is certainly in line with the direction in which a large portion of their party is headed.

But on the Republican side, the Trump administration is an enthusiastic promoter of artificial intelligence – which by definition means more data centers. It seems that Republican voters have not been able to connect these dots yet; Many seem comfortable embracing Trump while opposing one of his signature policies. We’ll probably never see a break. Parties often take contradictory positions; Democrats who want a moratorium on data centers say they support working people but want to stop the industry that generates blue-collar jobs in the data center supply chain. However, the data from this poll suggests to me that there is political openness for Republicans who want to run against data centers, even if Trump is pushing them. If this movement succeeds, it will be a bigger political earthquake than the one we are already witnessing.

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