JACKSON COUNTY, Ohio/WASHINGTON/SAN FRANCISCO -- When Kasey Hoover Hall's father called her and her sister to the family farmhouse in Jackson County, Ohio, one March evening, she didn't know what to expect. What she did know was the rule they had grown up with: You never sell the land.

But an offer had come in. An unnamed developer wanted to build part of a 2,000-acre (809-hectare) data center campus on about 273 acres owned by four generations of the Hoover family. At $50,000 per acre -- more than double the highest asking prices for properties on sale in the county -- the money being offered was potentially life changing. Hall, however, wasn't interested.

"I'd rather be poor and happy than loaded and not farming my farm," she told Nikkei Asia.

But saying "no" wasn't the end of her involvement. Days later, Hall, who works at the local municipal court, began to text neighbors, including several who were also given offers for their land, and asked whether they could meet to discuss the developer's proposal. This swiftly turned into a local movement, and the data center project has been put on hold.

Now Hall and her family, all registered Republicans, are considering an unusual step in deep-red Jackson County: voting Democratic in the U.S. midterm elections on Nov. 3 to punish the politicians they believe courted the industry -- and betrayed their trust.

"To me, it's not political, but it's gotten political," she said. "I just want to save our agriculture. I want to save our resources." Hall is not alone. Her turn against data centers is part of a nationwide trend with implications as far away as Asia, where companies ranging from Taiwanese server makers to South Korean chipmakers are reaping enormous profits by helping build America's AI infrastructure.

In a country marked by bitter partisan disputes over most big issues, an unexpected consensus opposing data centers has emerged during the campaign for the 2026 elections, which will determine whether President Donald Trump's Republican Party retains control of the two houses of Congress or cedes one or both to the minority Democrats.

Over 60% of Americans -- 71% of Democrats and 52% of Republicans -- said they would oppose a data center being built in their area, according to a poll by the Economist and YouGov. The Republican opposition is significant because 60% of data centers under construction are in states that Trump won in the 2024 presidential election, according to Cleanview, which tracks power infrastructure and data center development.

"For whatever reason, data centers, at least in the United States, have become kind of a synonym for class conflict," said David Crawford, chair of Bain's global technology, media and telecommunications practice. "They're [viewed as] billionaires' toys, and if you are building in my neighborhood, I better get paid for it." Crawford said he believed that the most likely outcome of the new political environment would be a change in the pace of development, meaning the industry would have to take part in a "legitimate debate" about the impact of building so many projects.

"The era of data centers being sited without any friction is probably over," he said. "You have to work through the processes, just as you would if you were building a giant apartment complex."

The shift in attitudes about data centers has been particularly dramatic in Ohio, where Trump won more than 55% of the vote in 2024. Polls show Jon Husted, the incumbent Republican senator, is locked in a close battle with Democratic challenger Sherrod Brown, who has put AI development at the heart of his campaign, attacking his opponent as "the face of data centers." A memo from the National Republican Senatorial Committee, dated Aug. 18 and reported by Axios, described Husted's record of support for data centers as a "risk" and warned that his defeat could transform the political climate for the industry.

"Data centers are the anchor hanging around Husted's neck," the memo said. "If he loses and data centers get the blame, politicians across the country will take notice -- and they will not go near the next one." In some parts of the state, data centers themselves are on the ballot. Over 100 miles (161 kilometers) north of the Hall family farm, voters in Pataskala will vote on a proposal to ban data centers larger than 25 megawatts, or those that use enough electricity to power 18,000 homes.

It is just one of around 40 local ballot measures nationwide concerning data center development that will be up for a vote on Nov. 3, according to election information tracker Ballotpedia. The vast majority are aimed at curbing construction via moratoriums, size limits or outright bans.

Austin Baurichter, a member of Conserve Ohio, which is pushing for a state referendum on big data centers, said there is a "babushka doll" of concerns about the projects. Like Hall, he objects to how developers have gone about their business, saying they have moved forward without consulting local communities. "The way they've gone at developing it has gone against people's democratic rights," said Baurichter.

Another concern is the impact of data center development on the price of power. Electricity costs rose 4.4% nationwide in July from a year earlier, and 15.2% in Ohio, according to the federal Energy Information Administration. Tech companies have promised to keep electricity prices down and federal legislation has been introduced to ensure that hyperscalers -- large tech companies that operate massive cloud computing and data center networks -- share the costs.

But voters are clearly worried about rising power prices. Grassroots opposition has resulted in at least 45 out of 89 new large-scale data center projects in the U.S. being blocked or delayed in the second quarter of 2026, according to Data Center Watch, a research group that tracks opposition to data centers. That brings the total for the first half of the year to 120 projects impacted.

Trump has remained resolutely in favor of data centers, saying in a social media post that the only reason for a community to oppose them "is if they want to end up being backwards and poor." But other Republican leaders have given ground on the issue. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott -- who previously supported the expansion of data centers -- issued a statewide moratorium on new projects in August as he sought a fourth term.

Other communities have imposed one-year moratoriums on data centers this year, and Monterey Park in California became the first city in the U.S. to pass a permanent ban Such developments are in line with a growing pushback seen around the world, including in Asia The economic stakes for Asia's tech suppliers are substantial.

Taiwanese exports to the U.S. for the first eight months of this year have risen over 56% compared with the same period last year, driven by data center components and chips. Meanwhile, South Korea's monthly trade surplus with the U.S. doubled in August compared with a year earlier, fueled by semiconductor chips, according to the most recent U.S. trade data.

Zhang Kuo, president of Alibaba.com, told Nikkei Asia that the e-commerce platform's nearly 30% year-on-year gross merchandise value growth in the U.S. this year was partly due to sales of electronic equipment for data centers growing rapidly amid the buildout of AI compute.

An executive at a South Korean chip giant said that while there has been some local pushback on the construction of semiconductor production facilities in the U.S. as well, the opposition was not as intense as for data centers. This, he said, is because chipmaking is relatively clean and quiet, and the economic benefits of hosting a chip production facility are much greater. "A chip fab needs thousands of workers for the long term.

A data center might hire some construction workers during construction, then it only needs a few people to handle the day-to-day operations. And data center operators are now looking to replace that handful of people with robots as well," the executive said.

Within the chip industry, executives remain confident they will overcome the anti-AI political tide. Semiconductors account for more than 50% of the capital expenditure required to build and operate an AI data center.

At the Semicon West industry event in San Francisco, Ryan Liebengood, chief legal officer and global compliance officer at ASM, said there would "probably not [be] a huge impact from what we see" because "both sides of the aisle care about semiconductors." Pradip Singh, GlobalFoundries' chief manufacturing officer, said he did not expect the election would "really cause any kind of big shift" in semiconductor related policies.

Zach Shen, a general manager at Hangzhou Shenshi Energy Conservation Technology, a maker of cooling equipment for data centers, said that compared with China, the U.S. situation remains promising.

"The data center market in China is hypercompetitive. The U.S. is still a high-growth, high-potential market, less competitive for data center equipment because the AI compute demand is still growing rapidly and it won't slow down anytime soon," Shen said.

An executive at a Japanese power company, declining to be named because he was not authorized to speak publicly, told Nikkei Asia that the political backlash had yet to affect data center-related sales.

"We've not seen any cancellations or slowdowns," the executive said, adding: "Politicians are just saying the things they need to keep their constituencies." However, industry executives and economic development officials acknowledge that they face a communications challenge in dealing with grassroots opposition.

"We want the appropriate hyperscalers. We want the appropriate brands and we want high quality products," said Barry Broome, president and CEO of the Greater Sacramento Economic Council in California, pointing to the potential tax revenue benefits from AI development.

"Now everyone is against data centers everywhere in the United States, but that doesn't mean they're right. And our job is to do the right things for the right reasons." Carl Gray, vice president of Gray Development, which oversees projects including digital infrastructure for large technology firms, said the industry had an opportunity to turn the current debate to its advantage.

"We welcome it: open lines of communication, getting information out there, responding to their concerns and requests," Gray said. "We're monitoring it, we're participating in it and we're responding to it." This kind of dialogue between data center builders and critics is certain to continue, if the midterm campaign is any indication. Miquel Vila of Data Center Watch said he expects grassroots opposition to data centers will persist after all the votes are counted.

In Jackson County, Hall said she would continue her work after the election to protect her Ohio community from data centers. She has proposed new zoning rules that would be voted on in November 2027.

"The politicians are changing their tune, they have changed their messaging," she said. "I do feel like we're making some progress, but we have to speak with our vote as well, because I do feel, at the end of the day, the only way to get through to these people is to start taking their power back."