There’s one more thing… and you’re on the wrong side of it
The 2026 midterms showed that AI has a big marketing problem. 56% of voters called it a crucial or major factor. Voters also went against data centers in 40 of 41 local ballot measures.
I’ve been rather neutral on AI on this channel, and I’ve acknowledged the utility plenty of times. But a lot of people are so focused on what this technology can do that they miss how regular people feel about it, and being right on the facts won’t fix that for you. So I went through the polling, the money and the politics of what just happened.
In this video:
– Why usage keeps going up while public sentiment gets more negative
– Jobs, power bills and the data center backlash
– How the people running these companies and the pro-AI crowd made it worse
– What AI has done to gamers, game stores and indie developers
– The money: spending, losses and who covers the difference
– How the parties flipped on AI, and what the exit polls said
– What this could mean for the people who want this technology to win
Chapters
00:00 What the midterms just showed
01:20 What AI actually is
03:21 Why usage and sentiment don’t match
04:34 Being right won’t fix this
05:09 Jobs
05:40 Power bills and data centers
06:32 The worst ambassadors
07:47 The pro-AI crowd’s attitude problem
11:24 A future levied onto people
11:55 Bad actors and who really benefits
14:03 What this did to gamers
16:23 Flooded markets and slop
17:43 The money
19:47 The administration’s bet on AI
20:41 How the parties flipped
21:24 $173 million in data center ads
21:58 What the exit polls said
22:26 The ballot measures
23:06 To be fair: the limits of this data
23:57 Democrats and regulation
25:19 Screaming about China
26:25 How the AI companies are responding
27:08 Where this leaves you
Sources: NBC News exit poll, Pew Research Center, Gallup, Quinnipiac, Challenger Gray and Christmas, IEEFA via Fortune, Blue Rose Research, Axios, FBI Internet Crime Report, Anthropic, The Harris Poll, IAB, Financial Times, Good Jobs First, Fox News, Bangor Daily News, Reuters, MIT Technology Review.
Rippaverse: https://rippaverse.com
#AI #midterms2026 #datacenters #EricJuly