Two things happened on Thursday. Justin Pearson won a Democratic primary in Memphis by forty points, running hard against the Elon Musk data centers going up in his district. And AP-NORC reported that more Americans than ever say extreme heat is driving up their electricity bills.
They're the same story. The cost of electricity has become a political issue in its own right — and voters increasingly aren't connecting it to climate change at all.
It Shows Up on the Bill
That's up from 69% in July 2024. AP-NORC's survey of 1,165 adults, fielded July 23–27, found the sharpest jump in the Midwest, where the share reporting a major hit to their bills climbed from 29% to 44% in two years.
It's not only the bill. Seven in ten say heat has cut into their family's time outdoors, up from about six in ten. Four in ten say it's changed their travel plans, up from one in four.
Two years is a short stretch for numbers to move this much.
The Bill Went Up, the Belief Went Down
In the very same survey, the share of Americans who say climate change is happening fell to 66%, down from 73% last September. Another 17% aren't sure, and 15% say it isn't happening at all.
So more people are feeling the heat, and more are paying for it — and yet fewer of them say climate change is real. Same poll, same people, one number rising and the other falling.
More Americans are feeling the heat than ever. Fewer are calling it climate change.
Incredibly, even the physical experience of a hot summer now sorts by party: Democrats were more likely than Republicans to report a "major" impact from heat on every single item AP-NORC tested — bills, sleep, travel, time outdoors.
The Grid Found a Candidate
If the anger isn't landing on climate change, it's landing somewhere. More and more, it's landing on the data center down the road.
Pearson won 65% to 25% in a Memphis district Republicans had just redrawn to be tougher for him. He ran on Medicare for All and poverty, but the data centers were the local, physical piece of it. Musk's Colossus supercomputer is powered partly by 69 gas turbines sitting just across the Mississippi line, in a metro that already leads Tennessee in asthma emergencies. Pearson tied the AI boom to dirty air and rising power bills, and won by forty.
He wasn't out on a limb. Gallup found this spring that 71% of Americans oppose a data center being built in their area, 48% of them strongly — 56% of Democrats, 48% of independents, 39% of Republicans in the strongly-opposed column. For comparison, only 53% oppose a nuclear plant nearby. Right now, Americans feel better about having a nuclear reactor down the road than they do a data center.
And the mood is still souring. Marquette's national poll in late July found 73% say the costs of data centers outweigh the benefits, up from 62% in January — eleven points in six months. Seven in ten now say AI will be bad for society, including 61% of the people who use it.
The opposition also runs deeper than a bad first impression. Impact Research ran focus groups with swing voters — a hundred people, so read it as texture, not a topline — and even when the moderator told them to assume a data center used no water and passed on no costs, a slight majority still didn't want one. Supporters called them a "necessary evil." Shown a clip of Tucker Carlson arguing with Kevin O'Leary about whether data centers create jobs, the room — Democrats and liberals included — took Carlson's side.
To be fair to the industry, that's the roughest version of the picture. Third Way asked the general public a similar "done right" question and found a near-tie — 43% in favor, 41% opposed. People who've just spent an hour thinking hard about a subject are always going to be warier than someone answering a phone poll. Both things are true: broad opinion is genuinely split, and the closer people look, the less they like what they see.
This week Poll Vault tracked 73 polls across ten topics — see them all →
The Deal Voters Will Take
Cygnal polled 800 likely voters in Texas on Governor Abbott's plan to regulate data centers, and it drew 82% support against just 9% opposition — 94% of Republicans, 81% of independents, 68% of Democrats. 75% said development should slow down until protections are in place, including 64% of Republicans. Backing the plan was a plain political win: 45% said it made them more likely to support a candidate, 13% less likely.
The most useful number is what happens when you sweeten the deal. Pair the guardrails with concrete community benefits — jobs, school revenue, a break on utility bills — and support for building a data center nearby flips from a 46–45 dead heat to 55–34. Same facility, different deal.
And none of this is locked in. Only 8% of Texans call data centers a top voting issue, and opinion moves a lot once people learn more. It's up for grabs in both directions, for whichever side shows up with real terms.
The country isn't against building. It's against being handed the bill for something it never agreed to. That's a solvable problem, and Texas just sketched the solution.
Quick Hits
The bigger squeeze. The McKinsey Institute for Economic Mobility surveyed 30,000 Americans this spring — the largest sample we logged this week. 90% name groceries and food as their top cost-of-living worry. 40% describe themselves as financially vulnerable or struggling to meet basic needs. And 60% say government should be helping people get ahead while only 30% say it actually has.
The same split, overseas. A Europion survey of 1,600 Hungarians found 84% have cut their electricity use to cope with the country's energy crisis — but only 34% blame extreme weather or climate, and views of who's responsible break sharply along party lines. People adapt together and argue over the cause.
Who they trust. Change Research finds voters trust their local communities far more than the federal government to handle a disaster.
Not just red states. In one of the most Democratic districts in the country, Upswing found 79% of NY-12 voters name tech companies being "too close to Trump" as their top AI concern, and 81% flag the theft of their data and privacy.
The number behind all of it. Marquette finds 35% name inflation and the cost of living as their top concern, more than double the economy at 15% — first place in every Marquette poll this year, and, poll director Charles Franklin notes, in every one since spring 2022. Trump's approval on inflation is 24%; on gas prices, 21%.
What Else We Tracked This Week
- Inflation Remains Top Issue as Trump Approval Ticks Up, Economy Mood Still Sour — Marquette Law School Poll
- 88% of Americans Say the US Has Not Achieved Its War Goals Against Iran — Marquette Law School
- Supreme Court Approval Stays Below 50%, With 58% Saying Politics Drives Rulings — Marquette Law School
- 8 in 10 Americans Unaware of Medicaid Work Requirements Set for January 2027 — NAMI / Ipsos
- Democrat Sand Leads Iowa Governor's Race as Trump and Reynolds Both Sink Underwater — Emerson College Polling
- More Than Half of Parents Enter Back-to-School Season Already Carrying Credit Card Debt — Qualtrics
- Two-Thirds of U.S. Workers Stay Online to Hide Time Saved by AI — Software Finder
- 92% of Farm Workers Say Trump Immigration Raids Have Hit Their Jobs — United Farm Workers Foundation
Until next time,
Alex Lundry
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