Democrats won 59-39 among 18-29 year old white men.
And the bigger shift to the Democrats tended to be in red states.
(Partly, of course, that’s because they can shift more.)
I suspect that part of what is going is tied to an issue that wasn’t asked about much by pollsters for why people voted the way they did: Flock cameras, the suddenly much hated automatic license plate readers that became a populist bete noire a few months ago.
A Twitter account called It’s Not Real made a highly speculative but interesting post:
Before I dive in, let me put the bottom line up front; increased fuel costs, driven by the war in Iran, were the primary factor in the massive GOP losses. …
There are approximately 150,000 gas stations in the United States, most of which have giant lighted signs listing the current prices of a gallon of gasoline and diesel.
The price of unleaded is by far the most obvious price in America. So when the electorate is especially concerned about the cost of living, the President probably shouldn’t choose to start a war that might get the Straits of Hormuz constricted.
Just sayin’ …
The top line items of concern were “corruption” and “data centers”. As @woke8yearold pointed out, the concerns about data centers were not concerns about AI, so was this really just about the myth of water usage?
A May 2026 Gallup poll found 71% of Americans objecting to building data centers in their locality. Gallup uses a similarly worded question to ask opinions of building a nuclear power plant nearby and only 53% are against.
Just a modest amount of this broad objection seems to be opposition to artificial intelligence in general for Yudkowskyan The-Robots-Will-Kill-Us-All dreads or AI-Will-Put-Us-Out-Of-Work fears. Data Center opposition seems to be more for NIMBY reasons.
Which are not wholly unreasonable. The water needs are not a big issue in most places, but artificial intelligence will someday use a lot of electricity, which is likely to be expensive.
And, to my surprise, it turns out that for speed-of-light reasons you really do need data centers close-by customers to get the full benefit of AI. I was surprised by this, probably because I use AI in a desultory fashion: as a search engine and to advise me on how-to questions, neither of which whiplash-fast responses are crucial. But I asked an AI if we could just put all the data centers next to a giant hydroelectric dam on the rapids of the lower Congo River that has been proposed for most of my lifetime. It replied that the 0.2 second round trip for data from the U.S. to the Congo and back would be disastrous for many AI applications. (But the robots would say that, wouldn’t they?)
This tweet then makes a leap that may be nuts, but seems worth exploring:
Then I came across a tweet from @iamtexture, “On IG I noticed a lot of people thought the data centers were where they store data about you.” …
They seemed to think data centers were part of a 24/7 surveillance apparatus for tracking US citizens and create some sort of social credit score.
Everything snapped into place for me at this point. They did make a rational choice from their flawed premises. Flock Cameras have had quite a few stories about officials abusing their access to stalk and harass people or misusing them to charge innocent people and all of this is happening at the local level, not federally. Tough on crime GOP officials have been the biggest proponents of Flock Cameras at the local level. GOP officials have been the biggest proponents of building data centers both at the state and federal level.
I had heard complaints about Flock, Palantir, “the Epstein class”, etc in my day to day life. I had not mentally labeled those as corruption and certainly hadn’t drawn the line to data centers.
Flock Cameras = Data Centers
Flock Cameras = Corruption
Palantir = Data Centers
Palantir = Corruption
Peter Thiel = Palantir
Peter Thiel = JD Vance
Epstein = Corruption
Data Centers = Corruption
The concerns over data centers and the concerns over corruption are the same issue and the backers of these perceived issues are the GOP at both the state and federal level.
The GOP becomes the party of Palantir/Data Centers/Epstein Class then Flock and local data center build outs take everything to the state level. This brings it from an issue with Trump/Vance/Thiel to an issue with your state level GOP.
People turned out for the Democrats like it was a presidential election and if you thought a Flock of Palantir cameras run by Epstein were going to store data in the Texas Desert and eat all the water, wouldn’t you?
This at least closed the loop on the giant disconnect I had between the results of the election and the vibe I was getting in meatspace. …
All of this is missed in the polling because when the Very Intelligent Pollsters write a question about corruption they’re thinking of Kristi Noem self-dealing, no bid contracts, federal government stakes in Intel, jets from Qatar, and insider trading.
When the electorate answer this question they’re not thinking about that at all! …
It can be hard for upper middle class pollsters to figure out what questions to ask the working class.
This is The Chud Veto.
Defection from experts is inherently unsophisticated and can become an autoimmune response. Vaccine skepticism and raw milk are two good examples of over-correction against the Noble Lie.
Yet, I think you can also come up with a sensible, pragmatic reason to tie data center/Flock camera paranoia to the high cost of gasoline: what young people, especially in wide open (formerly) red states like Texas, are especially concerned about is …
Paywall here.
