Artificial intelligence has moved to the forefront of campaigning in the 2026 U.S. midterm and local races. While the next presidential contest is not until 2028, candidates for congressional, state and local offices are increasingly framing their messages around AI-related concerns and policy positions.
How prominent is AI in campaigns?
New data from The Washington Post show that AI is now a top campaign issue, outranked only by guns and gun violence; other topics such as Israel, migration or cryptocurrencies follow behind AI. The reporting also finds that roughly 90 percent of U.S. states consider AI to be a problem.
That high visibility does not necessarily mean that Americans have uniformly embraced or rejected AI; rather, it reflects how rapidly the technology has become politically salient, making it difficult for candidates to avoid taking a stance.
Different emphases by party
The two major parties emphasize different risks within the same technology. The Washington Post broke the topic into subthemes and found that among Democratic candidates who mention AI, 90% raise general AI harms, 84% discuss data centers, 77% mention police and military uses of AI, 76% highlight child safety, and 72% bring up jobs.
Republican candidates more often stress national security and China: that theme appears among 76% of Republicans who discuss AI, compared with 24% of Democrats.
Rapid shifts in public opinion on data centers
Gizmodo cites a Heatmap survey showing a swift change in public attitudes toward data centers: public opinion shifted by 49 percentage points in just nine months. The speed of that change underscores how infrastructure issues tied to AI — such as building large data centers — have become politically charged.
Why this matters politically
Overall, the trend indicates that AI has moved out of the purely “technology” category into the realm of traditional political conflict. Politicians select issues strategically, elevating those they see as electoral opportunities or threats; AI now intersects with social harms, economic effects and national security in ways that shape campaigning and policy debates ahead of the 2026 elections.
