President Donald Trump’s embrace of AI (or, depending on who you ask, SI – superintelligence) is emerging as one of the most politically treacherous issues of the midterm cycles, pitting the President’s Silicon Valley allies against his own rural base.
The President’s commitment to the industry was on full display at the state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping, where AI CEOs were seated at the head table, per The New York Times.
Yet a recent New York Times/Siena University poll found that 61% of voters oppose data center construction, making it a rare bipartisan flashpoint. Though, less than 1% of likely voters listed AI/data centers as the single most important issue in deciding their vote this November.
For farmers and ranchers, the backlash is not abstract. According to an April 2026 American Farm Bureau Federation MarketIntel note, there were 4,925 active or under construction data centers across the U.S. – many of them racing into rural America specifically because agricultural land is flat, contiguous, and grid-connected. The same qualities that make it valuable for growing crops and raising livestock.
CNBC noted that land purchases for future data centers reached $6 billion in the first half of 2026, a 79% increase from the prior year. Though, data center construction isn’t the only reason farmland is declining in the U.S., as farm consolidation and land conversation has also played a role.
Aside from shrinking agricultural land, per The Wall Street Journal, farmers also fear being squeezed on energy.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Economic Research Service (ERS), agricultural electricity expenses are forecast to hit $8.5 billion in 2026, up 48% from 2019.
The political fallout for Republicans is acute. The Financial Times reported that President Trump’s own pollster warned candidates in a leaked memo that "unqualified support for building more AI data centers is a losing position," cautioning against "treating local concerns as uninformed."
The issue has not yet reached every likely midterm voter equally. A Galvanize Action poll shared by Out of State: The Politics & Policy of Rural America found that while fear of AI is widespread across moderate white women, most could not distinguish between the technology broadly and data centers specifically.
With 39 days until the midterm elections, voters and rural America will have a lot to compute before getting that “I Voted” sticker.
