Anxiety about AI is real, and it feels like it’s everywhere. Proclamations of AI-driven job losses and grassroots movements opposing data center construction make AI fears sound as if they’re universal, but there is a geography underlying the backlash against AI.
With midterm elections five months away and AI policy promising to be a political flashpoint, that map could come in handy for Democratic candidates—either as an asset, or as warning of their vulnerabilities.
In 2024, 62 of the 100 most AI-exposed counties voted Democrat, according to Brookings, which defined counties as AI-exposed if larger shares of their workforces performed roles that could be handled by AI. Those places include traditional blue strongholds like Manhattan, the Bay Area, and Seattle’s King County, though several swing states—all of which were won by President Donald Trump in 2024—also reflect high degrees of AI exposure, including Arizona and Georgia.
“The ‘techlash’ against artificial intelligence is spreading, driven by workers’ fears of the technology’s potential to disrupt their jobs and upend their livelihoods,” the Brookings authors wrote.
Some Democrats have seized on the issue and made it central to their campaign strategy, with some legislators calling for moratoriums on data center development and criticizing the Trump administration for its AI approach. The messaging might pay off, but given that the bulk of AI anxiety is concentrated in places that already voted blue two years ago, Democrats also stand to lose the most should AI backlash turn local.
It isn’t necessarily a surprise the country’s AI-exposed geography currently leans Democrat. The Brookings authors called this a case of “occupational sorting.” Democrats tend to govern in urban areas where white-collar and office work represent bigger proportions of the local economy, performing the kinds of roles firms are experimenting with AI for. The Brookings report described Democrat-run, high-exposure counties as “hotbeds for some of the AI era’s most agitated voters.”
