Across the United States, political candidates are grappling with an issue that has never before featured widely in American political life: artificial intelligence.

You can see it in candidates of both major parties trying to one-up each other with crackdowns on data centers.

Incumbents fighting to survive in toss-up districts racing to display their takes on AI and national security.

And progressive Democrats stress testing voter messaging about job-destroying automation.

Hundreds of candidates for House, Senate or governor this year have staked out policies related to AI or data centers on their campaign websites, injecting the issue into nearly 40 percent of races across the country, according to an analysis by The Washington Post. There are likely more races where AI has been featured in candidate messaging through speeches, debates and social media posts.

More Democrats and Republicans spotlight AI policies on their websites than mention longer-established political topics including Israel, manufacturing and racism, according to the analysis that covered 1,200 websites of candidates still in the running as of Monday.

Campaign veterans, pollsters and political analysts say they’ve rarely seen a new issue become a force so quickly in American politics. “AI has gone from something no one cared about … to it being ubiquitous,” said Kyle Kondik, an elections analyst at the University of Virginia Center for Politics.

AI barged into political campaigns with the same speed it’s pushing into every sphere of American life. Voters are torn between optimism and fear about AI, polls and other evidence show, and the technology is now fused with long-standing electoral issues such as the economy and the cost of living, corporate power and the future prospects of working Americans.

AI is likely to be an even hotter topic in the 2028 presidential campaign. Potential contenders such as Vice President JD Vance (R) and California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) are already discussing potential AI policies.

But political experts say that neither Republicans nor Democrats have yet staked out clear positions that resonate with voters’ anxieties about the technology. “Whoever does that will reap rich political rewards,” predicted Alyssa Cass, a partner at Democratic political strategy firm Slingshot Strategies.

While AI-related topics have rarely been the deciding factor in primary elections, Americans’ sour mood about AI is becoming an inescapable fact for campaigns.

Opinion polls show that a significant share of Americans are “very concerned” about AI’s role in the economy, don’t want data centers near them and believe the computer hubs will raise utility bills, fear job losses from AI, and generally believe AI will do more harm than good.

Brent Buchanan, founder and CEO of the Republican polling firm Cygnal, said he picked up on a new pattern in focus groups starting around the end of last year. One participant would spout off complaints about AI or data centers unprompted, spurring others in the room to pile on with more vitriol.

“The instant voter reaction is, ‘Hell no,’” he said.

Midterm candidates, particularly incumbents with a history of backing local data centers, are increasingly responding to backlash to the hulking computer hubs powering AI services. Data centers account for by far the largest share of AI policies discussed on campaign websites analyzed by The Post. The candidates spotlight data centers’ effects on local electricity costs, water and land use.

“They all know that they’re potentially vulnerable and this is an issue that voters care about,” said Erin Covey, House editor for the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan election analysis site.

In Texas, one of the top destinations for new AI data centers, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has reversed his relatively unbridled support for the facilities, including by unveiling sweeping data center regulations earlier this month.

The governor’s new policies came after both his Democratic opponent in November, Gina Hinojosa, and some prominent state Republicans had pilloried Abbott for allowing unrestrained data center development at the expense of Texans and the stability of the state’s electric grid. President Donald Trump said Abbott was making a “mistake” in casting aside the regional economic benefits of data centers.

Data center rage is even animating some midterm races that are not close, including for the House seat held by Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-New Jersey).

During the Democratic primary campaign, rival candidate and community activist John Hsu attacked Pallone for what he said was the incumbent’s inaction on higher home electricity bills related to data centers. Pallone handily won the early June primary and the Cook Political Report predicts he will “easily secure another term.”

Weeks later, the moderate Democrat surprised political observers by defying House Democratic leadership and throwing his weight behind a national data center ban. The most prominent advocates for bans are left-wing politicians such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont).

AI data centers and concerns about their role in spiraling home electric bills emerged as a salient campaign issue for a handful of Democratic candidates in 2025 and early this year. Now, “it’s starting to metastasize and it’s going to be more bipartisan,” said Ed Mills, a Washington policy analyst for Raymond James, a financial services firm.

One House race in Colorado shows the breadth of AI policies cropping up beyond data centers.

Rep. Gabe Evans (R) earlier this year expressed concerns to Trump administration officials about excessive AI regulations. More recently, Evans, who political analysts say faces a tough reelection fight, has shown interest in proposals for AI policy and regulation.

In June, he spearheaded legislation that tries to tackle data center-related electricity costs. Last month, he proposed a bill to help American AI companies compete with lower-cost Chinese technology. He also recently quizzed a witness at a House hearing about AI driving up prices for consumer electronics.

The Post contacted the candidates mentioned in this article, most of whom did not respond to requests for comment. Spokespeople for Abbott and U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan said that they are responding to state residents who want to safeguard their electric grids, water and quality of life from data centers.

The Post analysis found some differences emerging in how candidates of each major party discuss AI issues. Democrats running for House, Senate or governor this year are more than twice as likely as Republican candidates to discuss any topic related to AI or data centers on their campaign websites.

Republicans dominate when it comes to discussing AI in the context of national security and competition with China. Supporters of the AI industry, including Trump, often say that it should be lightly regulated to maintain U.S. leadership in an essential technology.

Political candidates, staffers and analysts say that candidates’ messaging about AI has not hardened along policy lines, reflecting a tug-of-war among voters between fear of AI and fear of missing out on the opportunities sparked by the technology.

Both Democrats and Republicans express excitement about the potential for new job opportunities related to AI on their campaign websites, for example. But candidates from both parties also express concern about AI wiping out jobs.

Scott Wiener (D), a California state senator running for the San Francisco congressional seat being vacated by Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D), sees an oddity in the common constituent questions about AI’s feared impact on jobs in technology and other local industries.

On many other topics, such as Gaza and housing, the questioner often knows what policies they support and wants to hear that Wiener agrees, he said. By contrast, voters who ask about AI generally seem uncertain. “With AI it’s common for people to ask an open-ended question like, ‘What are you going to do?’” Wiener said.

Political staffers and operatives say that left-wing Democrats are already testing broad AI policy platforms that they hope will resonate with voters in 2028. They’re hashing over policies that could insulate Americans from AI-related job losses, guard against rogue AI cyberattacks and protect children from AI dependency and abuses.

The backlash against AI data centers “is just the beginning of the political earthquake that is going to come” if AI starts to kill jobs, Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) predicted in a news conference on Aug. 6.

Cliff Young, the chair of market research firm Ipsos, said bipartisan anti-AI populism could become a fixture of American politics if the existing public mistrust of political and economic systems combines with future AI-related mass job losses.

“It’s potentially more combustible because it’s not just about technology, it’s not just about AI,” Young said. “It’s more about this fundamental belief that nothing is working.”

About this story

The Post used data from Ballotpedia to identify 1,335 Democratic and Republican candidates who have advanced to a general election or are awaiting a runoff or primary and focused on the 90 percent with websites listed. The homepage, candidate biography page and policy pages were scraped from those websites.

Keyword searches were used to identify mentions of AI and data centers, along with other policy issues such as cryptocurrency, affordability and abortion. The issues were selected based in part on Quinnipiac and Gallup polling on the most important topics to midterm voters.

The Post grouped about 1,000 AI-related policy sentences from candidate websites into different categories, such as data centers, children’s safety and possible AI benefits and harms, using an AI classifier (GPT-5.4 mini). It had an accuracy rate of 95 percent on a hand-labeled test set of 250 posts. Errors were mostly on statements that did not discuss policy, or referred to AI very briefly.

Image credits: Greg Abbott by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post; Gabe Evans by Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post; Abdul El-Sayed by Dieu-Nalio Chery/For The Washington Post.