On Tuesday, voters will choose a new Congress, 36 governors, and thousands of state and local officials. The people they elect will decide which power plants, housing developments, pipelines, and data centers get approved in 2027.
At Echo Canyon Consulting, our public affairs team helps companies, nonprofits, and coalitions win those decisions at city councils, county commissions, and state legislatures. Heading into Election Day, three issues keep coming up in our work. AI tools are speeding up both sides of every fight. Voters now ask what any new project will cost them before they ask anything else. Data centers sit right where those two pressures collide. If you need something built, approved, or funded in the next year, each one should shape your public affairs strategy.
How AI Is Changing Public Affairs Strategy on Both Sides of a Fight
Our team now finishes research, legislative monitoring, and first drafts in hours instead of days, so our clients can respond to policy threats before they harden into law.
Opposition groups use the same tools. They find each other faster, share tactics, and pack a hearing room on a few days’ notice. A neighborhood group with a laptop can now organize as fast as a well-funded campaign, so your strategy has to plan for an opponent who can mobilize overnight.
Why Affordability Is the Deciding Question for Voters in 2026
Affordability is the issue of this election cycle, and the monthly power bill makes it personal for voters. When families feel squeezed, every new project faces the same question from them, “What is this going to cost me?” If you don’t answer it clearly, your opponents will answer it for you.
A clear answer on cost moves the numbers. Bipartisan pollsters Fabrizio Ward and Impact Research surveyed voters nationwide for the American Infrastructure Alliance, a coalition of AI companies, investors, and labor unions, and Semafor reported the results. Overall, 58% of voters opposed building data centers in their state. When companies pledged to cover electricity costs, protect consumers from higher utility bills, and safeguard local environmental resources, 54% said they would support construction.
Why Local Opposition to Data Centers Keeps Winning
Data centers are warehouse-sized buildings full of servers that run AI tools, cloud storage, and nearly everything people do online, and they use enormous amounts of electricity. Voters connect them to a technology many feel uneasy about and to the grid that sends their monthly bill.
Communities are fighting back. From January through March of 2026, residents and organized opposition groups blocked or delayed at least 75 data center projects, representing about $130 billion in planned investment, according to Data Center Watch’s Q1 2026 report. In three months, local opposition to data centers disrupted roughly as much as it did in all of 2025. The number of active opposition groups more than doubled over the same period and now spans 49 states.
Public opinion has moved just as fast. A nationally representative Annenberg Public Policy Center survey found that 61% of U.S. adults oppose new data centers in their area, up from 49% four months earlier. Majorities of Democrats, Republicans, and independents agree, which makes the opposition hard for elected officials to dismiss as partisan.
Opponents of those 75 projects won by organizing first. They knocked on doors, collected petition signatures, filled hearing rooms, and defined each project for residents before its sponsors said a word.
How to Prepare for a Public Hearing Before Opponents Do
By the time a council or commission votes, the result reflects the work you did in the months before. In the Army, we never sent a unit into terrain that hadn’t been scouted, and public affairs works the same way. Four steps put your project on solid ground before the hearing.
Do the advance work
Map the decision-makers, the local influencers, and the likely opposition before you announce anything. Know who votes, who they listen to, and what will worry them.
Build a coalition before you need one
Bring together the local employers, workers, and residents who stand to benefit. Give each of them a reason and a role to speak up. Coalition building and stakeholder strategy give your project local voices that elected officials trust more than any developer.
Educate residents early and in their language
Answer the cost question first, in plain terms, through the channels residents already use. Explain what the project means for their bills, their water, and their roads before anyone else frames it for them.
Prepare your people for the hearing
Rehearse testimony and anticipate the hardest questions, so every speaker knows the facts cold and the hearing holds no surprises. If the first time the community hears about your project is the public notice, you’re already behind.
Start Your Public Affairs Strategy Months Before the Hearing
At Echo Canyon, we help clients get ahead of the conversation. Our team embeds with yours to map stakeholders, build coalitions, monitor legislation, and put your story in front of residents first. For the bigger picture, read our guide to what public affairs is and why it matters.
If you have a project, a vote, or a hearing on the horizon, connect with our team now, while there’s still time to do the advance work.