'Electoral poison': Trump warned 'there's no debate' his pet project is rankling America

Opposition to AI data centers has become one of the rare issues in American politics that cuts across party, geography and ideology, according to CNN's Harry Enten — but for some reason President Donald Trump shrugs off those concerns.

Voter anxiety has surged over artificial intelligence and the massive data centers that technology requires, and Enten found polling that shows 70 percent opposition to building AI data centers in their area.

"I'm not talking about the facts here, whether it's a good idea or a bad idea," he said, "just this is how people feel about it, and it's pretty clear."

That opposition holds remarkably steady across groups that rarely agree on anything, with roughly three in five Republicans in opposition to local data centers, and 63 percent of people in urban areas. Rural Americans and Democrats are even more opposed, at 75 percent and 76 percent, respectively, but the president publicly supports construction of those facilities and has downplayed their impact on the environment and local communities.

"There is no debate when it comes to where people stand on AI and data centers," Enten said. "You rarely see this type of agreement."

Given a choice between building AI infrastructure "slowly to address local concerns" or "quickly to maintain a tech edge over" countries like China, voters chose the slower path by a nearly 4-to-1 margin — 78 percent to 21 percent. Enten noted that this preference holds across "all of the different political and demographic groups."

A broader question about whether AI development itself is "bad for society" also produced rare cross-partisan agreement as 63 percent of Republicans, 74 percent of Democrats and 75 percent of independents said yes, alongside 70 percent of Americans overall.

"The electoral politics of this are very, very clear," Enten said. "AI and data centers are, simply put, electoral poison."

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