Why this map, and why now
Pennsylvania lawmakers returned to Harrisburg on September 28 after a ten-week recess, and data center bills are on the list of what they could take up this fall. Pennsylvania has more voters with a stake in it than most states. Only California, Texas, Illinois and Florida have more voters living near a proposed or operating data center.
What sets Pennsylvania apart is what those voters are worried about. Across the country, the electric bill is the main data center concern for about one in four voters in these communities, and environment and water leads in most states. In Pennsylvania, energy costs come first for more than four in ten of them, 1,818,585 voters. That's more than in any other state, California and Texas included, and Pennsylvania is the largest of the nine states where energy costs lead.
That split matters for anyone advertising on the issue. An ad about rising electric bills, an ad about jobs and new investment, and an ad about water and land use speak to three different sets of voters. Each concern is its own PharosGraph audience, so a campaign or interest group can send each message to the voters it fits instead of spending the same message on everyone near a data center.
The issue is also moving in the state's closest House races. In our weekly read of the issues shaping every race we track, energy costs and data centers ranked eleventh in the 8th District race between Rob Bresnahan and Paige Cognetti on September 3. By September 17 it was fourth, and it held there this week. In the 1st District race between Brian Fitzpatrick and Bob Harvie, the issue entered the ranking at fourth on September 17 and sits at fifth now.
Many of the voters still in play in those races are on this map. PharosGraph tracks, race by race, which voters are firmly behind a candidate and which are still open to persuasion. In the 8th District, more than half of the persuadable voters, 112,927 of them, live in these communities. Among those voters, energy costs come first for close to six in ten, a higher share than the 46 percent statewide. In the 1st District, about half of the persuadable voters, 116,671, live in these communities. Among them, environment and water comes first for about a quarter, against about one in eight in the 8th District.
The audience reaches well past those two districts. Every registered voter in Lackawanna County, home to Scranton, is in it, and so are 92 percent of Allegheny County's. In the governor's race between Josh Shapiro and Stacy Garrity, 1,634,863 of the persuadable voters live in these communities.
A month ago, data centers weren't in the 1st District's ranking at all. That's why we rank the issues in every race weekly and refresh these audiences every month, so the audience a campaign buys in October reflects the race in October. The data center audiences, including the three concern audiences, the Persuade and GOTV audiences for Pennsylvania's competitive House races and the related energy audiences are all available for activation now through L2 DataMapping and in LiveRamp. For the Rob Bresnahan and Paige Cognetti campaigns ahead of their October 29 debate, and for any group advertising on data centers in Pennsylvania, these are the voters to reach, each with the message that fits their concern.