The intensifying debate over artificial intelligence offers promise and peril for both parties, with voters skeptical about the technology but split on which party is better equipped to address it, according to a new poll from The New York Times and Siena University.
Less than two months before the midterm elections, neither party has claimed a clear advantage on A.I. Forty-two percent of voters said they trusted Republicans more, while 40 percent said they trusted Democrats more. Voters gave Democrats the edge on every other issue tested, including immigration, the economy and foreign wars.
The poll showed why midterm candidates in both parties have quickly turned against data centers. Sixty-one percent of voters said they opposed the construction of the enormous computing complexes that power A.I., including 75 percent of Democrats and 47 percent of Republicans.
Younger voters were much more likely to oppose data center construction, with nearly 80 percent of those under 30 in opposition. Opposition declined steadily with age: A narrow 53 percent majority of voters over the age of 65 were against data center construction.
The poll offered the latest signal that A.I. does not polarize voters the way many other issues do. Neither party has coalesced behind a unified vision for how — or whether — to regulate A.I. at the federal level.
The survey was conducted from Sept. 8 to 13, as A.I. researchers issued warnings about a potentially existential threat posed by the technology, and as industry executives called for a slowdown in its development. (One top executive, Dario Amodei of Anthropic, said he worried that A.I. would take down the internet within 12 months.) The poll did not ask about voters’ views of A.I. safety.
For now, A.I. does not appear to be a top issue for voters. Less than 1 percent said A.I. or data centers would be the most important issue deciding their vote in November; the economy was by far the leading issue prioritized.
But data centers, which drive up electricity prices, have emerged as an early point of contention in the A.I. debate, and Democrats and Republicans have joined efforts to stop them in dozens of states and municipalities.
In the poll, a majority of voters who opposed data centers — 56 percent — said they supported limits on them rather than an outright ban.
For voters opposed to data centers, climate-related concerns were the most common reason, cited by nearly a third of this group. But the reasons differed by party: Democrats were nearly twice as likely as Republicans to cite environmental worries, while Republicans were more likely to say they generally distrusted A.I.
Nearly one in five voters who opposed data centers (18 percent) mentioned general distrust of A.I. rather than a specific reason. Asked to describe their concerns in their own words, one respondent mentioned the 1984 movie “The Terminator,” while another just said it was “terrifying to her.”
There has been little federal action to regulate A.I. so far.
The survey was completed on Sunday, a day before President Trump responded to growing A.I. anxiety by issuing a forceful statement opposing any guardrails. He argued that regulations would inhibit America’s ability to beat China in the race to develop A.I., and that the only “control” the United States needed was a “High IQ” president.
Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, has also spoken out in recent days against regulation.
But some prominent Democrats, especially progressives, have issued urgent calls for congressional action.
Senator Bernie Sanders, the progressive Vermont independent, has been the loudest lawmaker on Capitol Hill warning about the threat of A.I. He has called for a ban on superintelligent A.I. and a pause in the technology’s development, citing assertions from some A.I. safety researchers that there is a greater than 10 percent chance that the technology could wipe out humanity within a decade.
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, another progressive leader, supports Mr. Sanders’s measures, her spokesman said. Many Democratic lawmakers have not embraced them, but Mr. Sanders has found some unlikely allies.
He is joining Stephen K. Bannon, the podcaster and longtime Trump ally, and a group of lawmakers in both parties for a conference on A.I. regulation on Tuesday.
Some Republicans have also expressed concern. In Michigan, the Republican nominee for Senate, former Representative Mike Rogers, a Trump ally, has called for a regulatory crackdown on A.I., as has the Democratic nominee for Senate, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed.
Dr. El-Sayed, a progressive, has called for an “all-out pause” on A.I. development.
Mr. Rogers, at odds with Mr. Trump, wrote on social media over the weekend that “the time to stop a crisis is yesterday” and that the government needs “guardrails in place to protect us from the rapid advancements we’ve seen.” He said A.I. regulation would be among his priorities if he reached the Senate.
Although A.I. remains a relatively low priority for voters, according to the poll, some strategists in both parties argue it will become a more influential topic — and perhaps the central issue of the 2028 presidential race — as the technology develops.
