Voter turnout spiked in Minnesota communities linked to hyperscale data centers

Running for City Council in Farmington this year, Ben Blomgren said voters asked him about data centers more than anything else.

“This was the issue that everyone wanted to talk about,” he said. “When I went door to door, it was about the data center.”

Blomgren had a clear position on the proposed Farmington Technology Park hyperscale data center project. He opposed it, and, if elected, would vote against it at every turn.

On Election Day, the candidate earned the most votes out of six people running for two open seats. When he takes office in January, he’ll be one of a host of newly elected leaders in Minnesota bringing skeptical stances against data centers to local governments.

A spike in voter turnout in Farmington and other cities linked to data centers helped these candidates win, according to data from the Minnesota Secretary of State.

Data centers became a new election issue in Minnesota this year. After city leaders opened doors to developments – sometimes using nondisclosure agreements to keep details out of the public eye – residents in suburban Farmington and Greater Minnesota cities like Hermantown, Faribault, Pine Island and Monticello organized against them.

In the face of this loud opposition, projects mostly inched forward unless courts slowed them down . But the issue contributed to an uptick in candidates filing to run in local government elections this year.

On the campaign trail, at forums and in newspaper articles, data centers dominated the discourse. Several races offered stark differences between candidates on the issue.

Pine Island’s mayoral race, for example, featured an appointed incumbent who supported Google’s data center project against a candidate motivated to run against it. The latter, Mark Lang, won in a landslide.

Voter turnout data showed 12% more people in Pine Island voted in the race compared with the last midterm race in 2022. The rise, though, was about in line with Minnesota’s 13% increase in voter turnout between the two years.

In Hermantown, tensions flared in late October when council members approved a key step in the regulatory process for another Google-backed data center. Days later, voters ousted one of the council members involved, Andy Hjelle. Two members of Stop the Hermantown Data Center, Emma Richtman and Candi Mock, beat him in a race for two open seats, helped by an 18% increase in voter turnout.

Farmington’s city council race had 48% more voters than in 2022. Along with a robust slate of candidates, a special mayoral election drew people to the polls.

But the sitting council’s data center decisions clearly played an important role, Blomgren said. He lives about 1,000 feet from where the hyperscale development could be built.

There are residents who live much closer.

“People built their homes to the west side of the property thinking it would be a golf course or homes,” he said. “When you build a home next to a railroad track, you know a railroad track is there. You don’t build your home thinking there will be a data center.”

He isn’t opposed to data centers per se, but said he is against projects of such a massive size receiving selective rezoning near residential neighborhoods.

“The scale is really the issue,” he said. “Few people are as worried about a gas station next to them. A lot of people would be if it were a refinery.”

Even more than Farmington, Faribault had the largest rise in voter turnout among cities linked to data centers. About 61% more votes were cast in the southern Minnesota city this year than in 2022.

A deep field of candidates likely contributed to the uptick. Also, none of the six candidates running for three spots expressed support for data centers ahead of the election. The top vote-getter, Natalie Halverson, said she thinks opposition to data centers partly explains the huge turnout at polling places.

“It is a big looming issue,” she said. “People want to know where people stand on that. I think it might have driven some people to be a little bit more engaged.”

The election wasn’t all about data centers, however, she cautioned. Faribault faces major challenges apart from whether a data center development is worth it, including housing shortages and maintaining healthcare access. Halverson and other candidates talked about those issues and data centers during their campaigns.

“It’s a hot-button issue,” she said of data centers. “But Faribault is not a one-issue town.”

The same is true in other cities. Blomgren’s campaign site pointed out Farmington needs a grocery store, right under his stance on data centers.

It’s reasonable to conclude data centers were not the sole driver, but rather an important driver, of voting this year. At a postelection panel at Minnesota State University in Mankato, political scientist Kevin Parsneau noted the issue featured prominently in state legislative races.

A state House race in the area, District 18A covering North Mankato and St. Peter, had ads pinning a pro-data center stance on Republican incumbent Erica Schwartz. She lost to DFL challenger Leah Hanson, part of a blue wave carrying her party to legislative majorities.

Stances on data centers don’t entirely fall along partisan lines, Parsneau said, but President Donald Trump’s loud support for data centers before the election may have had an impact.

“Probably Donald Trump didn’t do Republicans a favor by being very much for data centers,” he said.

His colleague, political scientist Fred Slocum, noticed campaign ads centered around data centers in the close 1st Congressional District race. The winning Democratic candidate , Jake Johnson, called for a moratorium on the projects, distinguishing himself from Republican incumbent Brad Finstad.

Pine Island, Faribault, North Mankato and Cannon Falls, all cities linked to data centers in recent years, are located in the 1st District. National exit polls back up the idea that data centers were one important factor for voters in congressional races.

“In that race, that may have well made a difference,” Slocum said.

It’s unclear, because newly elected officials against data centers won’t necessarily represent a majority on councils. They may need colleagues to join them, and in some cases those colleagues would need to exhibit a sudden change of heart in order to do so.

Monticello, where 30% more voters cast ballots in council races and 33% more voted in a mayoral race, had one winning city council candidate, Derek Armstrong, who raised concerns about a project. But a vocal data center critic, Monica Primeau, narrowly lost her mayoral race to incumbent Lloyd Hilgart by 40 votes.

Pine Island looks likely to have two of five council members against Google’s project. Hermantown is on track to have the same ratio as Pine Island, while Faribault’s new council members will represent three votes in a seven-member body.

Earning a spot on the council will at least open up the candidates to more information. Halverson described a disconnect between information that city council members and staff are privy to on the data center plan versus what residents are told.

“There’s been closed meetings obviously and they’re not able to share what happens in those meetings, so coming into this there’s a lot we don’t know,” she said. “I’m looking forward to having the full picture of where the city is at in this project.”

In what could be the first of more changes in store for Farmington’s local government, the city’s administrator resigned following the election . Outgoing Mayor Nick Lien, who himself stepped in after his predecessor resigned in the wake of a heated exchange with a resident regarding the data center, linked the administrator’s resignation to the “democratic process.”

Farmington appears closest to having a majority voting bloc against the data center. Blomgren is against it and a newly elected mayor, David Pritzlaff, opposes it, while another new council member could serve as a swing vote.

“I’m not going to be voting to advance this project,” Blomgren said. “But every community has to weigh this differently. For us it was very clear that putting this between two neighborhoods was not the right choice for this city.”

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This story was originally published by MinnPost and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.