Texas has spent decades as a wild west for industry, fighting for factories, warehouses, and corporate headquarters to come to the Lone Star State.
Officials have long advertised the state’s laissez faire attitude — but a new poll from the University of Texas’ Texas Politics Project suggests that with data centers, it may be a different story.
A majority of Texans now say they oppose having a data center built in their community.
This news comes at a time when Texas has rapidly become the nation’s top destination for the infrastructure powering artificial intelligence.
James Henson is co-director of the University of Texas’ Texas Politics Project. He sat down with the Texas Standard to discuss his team’s findings.
“Something is changing out there, at least around this issue, and I think one is tempted to think that this is all anti-development liberals or Democrats or something like that,” Henson said. “Republicans are split — 43% of Republicans oppose this, 42% support. And the opposition is centered in the base of Republican support, in rural areas for 62% opposing. There’s something really going on here.”
One possible reason for the change in attitudes could be the economy.
Another poll done by the Texas Politics Project said nearly half (49%) of Texans expect AI to have a negative impact on the economy. Only 29% expect the impact to be positive.
At first glance, this attitude shift appears to be a change from previous trends in AI policymaking. Back in November, Gov. Greg Abbott declared Texas an “epicenter” for the AI industry.
“We must ensure that America remains at the forefront of the AI revolution, and Texas is the place where that can happen,” he said in a press release. That statement coincided with a $40 billion investment in Texas by Google as part of the company’s “Investing in America” initiative.
In 2025, lawmakers gave the data center industry tax break incentives that will culminate in lost revenue of around $3.2 billion in the next two years, according to the comptroller’s office. Now lawmakers are reconsidering these incentives for next year’s session.
But there is a menagerie of concerns about AI that go beyond its economic impacts: from environmental, to aesthetic, to existential.
“I think people are objecting for different reasons,” said Henson. “On one hand, lots of environmental concerns about water and resource use. But if you’re living next to these data centers or in the region, as we saw in testimony in the Legislature yesterday, they have a big impact on people’s lives.”
Henson said that this poll demonstrates a shift in attitude among ex-urban and rural Texans as well.
“A lot of quality-of-life issues that are really lending to a kind of NIMBY dynamic — that’s “Not In My Backyard” — that we’re used to seeing in urban centers and the suburbs, but with the building of these large facilities, we’re seeing it emerge, I suspect, in exurban and rural areas,” said Henson.
The attitudes among politicians have also changed. Republicans, typically champions of Texas’ lax regulations, have begun to discuss AI infrastructure with greater scrutiny.
According to a June 10 press release, Gov. Abbott directed the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUC) and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) to protect Texan ratepayers from the costs of data centers.
“Data centers must operate in ways that reduce costs for residential electricity customers, do not drain water needed for our communities, and take into consideration the needs of our neighborhoods,” said Abbott.
The press release also said Abbott will “work with lawmakers on legislation requiring data centers to use water-efficient cooling systems, report accurate data on electricity and water usage necessary for state planning, phase out outdated tax incentives, and adopt other practices that protect neighboring communities, such as setbacks and noise reduction.”
Meanwhile, in Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s list of priorities for the 2027 Texas Senate session, data centers were listed three times. Patrick plans to assess data center’s water demands, weigh economic benefits of this infrastructure against the impacts on “landowners, private property rights, water infrastructure, and community integrity,” and assess the cost of the sales tax exemption given to data centers.
There is an underlying theme: Who’s footing the bill?
“Right now with the economy front and center in people’s minds, in particular the prices of everyday living, I don’t think you can separate the politics and the policy at this moment,” said Henson.
As it stands now, it’s impossible to say how Texans will feel about the infrastructure in the future. However, Henson said that this poll does seem indicative of a larger trend.
“We’re going to have to see how unique these data centers are,” he said, “but I think it’s hard not to see this as a very interesting development in a state that has traditionally been so open to growth, but in the last few years has become more skeptical after a couple of decades of really rapid and really broad growth in the state.”
