The claim ricocheting around social media is simple: 75% of Americans don’t like data centers, but “Dirty Jobs” host Mike Rowe says we have to build them anyway, including South Carolina data centers. Both halves are close enough to sound true and wrong enough to mislead.
The real number is 71%, and it measures something narrower than dislike (Gallup, 2026). Rowe does argue the buildout is unavoidable, but the “75%” tied to his name is his own gut estimate, not a poll, and he is a paid partner of the industry he defends (mikerowe.com, 2025). For Horry County residents, the part that actually reaches your mailbox is neither the poll nor the celebrity. It is your power bill.
What the polls actually found
Understanding South Carolina Data Centers
No credible survey shows that 75% of Americans dislike data centers. **The best-sourced figure is 71%**, and Gallup got it by asking a very specific question: “Would you favor or oppose building a data center in your area to support artificial intelligence, or AI, technology in the U.S.?” (Gallup, 2026). Seventy-one percent opposed, 48% strongly, with only about a quarter in favor, from a sample of roughly 1,000 adults at a margin of error of plus or minus 4 points (Gallup, 2026).
Understanding the landscape is crucial, especially for those in South Carolina where data centers are becoming increasingly important.
That wording matters. It is a local-siting question, a NIMBY measure of whether you want one built near you, deliberately modeled on Gallup’s long-running question about nuclear plants (Gallup, 2026). It does not measure general dislike of data centers, opposition to tax incentives, or a flat “don’t like” verdict. Opposition to a nearby data center now runs higher than opposition to a nearby nuclear plant, and it is bipartisan, a rare point of agreement across Democrats, Republicans, and independents (The Hill, 2026).
Two other polls land in the same range. Heatmap Pro and Embold Research found 71% oppose a data center “being built near their home,” from 4,118 registered voters at plus or minus 1.6 points (Heatmap, 2026). CBS News and YouGov found Americans oppose one “in their area” by more than two to one (CBS News, 2026). The Heatmap survey also caught the shift driving this: 53% now blame data centers for rising electricity costs, up from 28% a few months earlier (Heatmap, 2026).
So where does “75%” come from? Two places, neither of them a national dislike number. One is Gallup’s regional breakdown, where the South registers about 75% opposition and the Midwest 76% (Gallup, 2026). Roughly three in four Southerners oppose a data center in their area” is defensible and more relevant to Horry County than the national figure, but it is a subgroup, not the whole country. The other source is Mike Rowe himself.
What Mike Rowe actually said
Rowe, host of “Dirty Jobs” and founder of the mikeroweWORKS Foundation, genuinely argues data centers are necessary. In his own words, “The need for Data Centers is impossible to overstate,” and, borrowing Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s “AI factories” framing, “if we want to remain competitive with China, we need to build thousands of them” (mikerowe.com, 2025). In a Fox News interview he called them “those much-feared data centers that we’re going to have to build if we want to remain internationally competitive” (The Hill, 2026). He calls the buildout “not really negotiable” (The Way I Heard It, 2026). So the shorthand “Rowe says they’re necessary” is fair.
But his real argument is narrower than the headline suggests, and it is worth hearing because it is the strongest case for the upside. Rowe is not primarily a data-center cheerleader. His central point is a skilled-trades labor shortage: America does not have enough electricians, fiber technicians, and welders to build what is coming. His signature anecdote, from a BlackRock summit in March 2026, is three electricians under 30 at a Plano, Texas data center earning $240,000 to $280,000 a year with no college debt, each poached three times in 18 months (Fortune, 2026). In June 2026 he launched a $115 million skilled-trades program, “America’s Workforce Academy,” with Meta (Fox Business, 2026).
That partnership is also why his advocacy comes with an asterisk. Rowe is aligned with the industry he promotes: the $115 million Meta academy (Fox Business, 2026), plus a reported $100,000 donation from Aligned Data Centers to his foundation. He is a credible, on-record advocate, not a neutral analyst, and readers deserve to know that when they weigh his “necessary.”
As for the “75%,” **that number is Rowe’s, not a pollster’s**. On his podcast he said, “It feels to me like 75% of the country is uneasy about AI and nervous about data centers” (The Way I Heard It, 2026). He explicitly hedged it, said “uneasy” and “nervous” rather than “oppose” or “dislike,” and used it to argue the opposite of what the viral claim implies, that the buildout is unavoidable despite the unease. Presenting his gut impression as polling data gets both the source and the meaning wrong.
Horry County’s real stake
There is a genuine data center in Horry County, but it is not the power-hungry AI campus the debate usually pictures. DC BLOX operates the Myrtle Beach Cable Landing Station at the Myrtle Beach International Technology and Aerospace Park, opened in 2023 at a cost of about $31.5 million on 21-plus acres (SC Commerce, 2022). In October 2025 the company added roughly 20 adjacent acres, room for five more subsea cables and about 20 additional megawatts, with cables tied to Google, Meta, and other carriers linking to Europe and South America (DC BLOX, 2025).
The honest caveat: this is a subsea-cable landing station, a connectivity gateway, not a hyperscale AI facility, and it is low-headcount. The original phase created about three permanent jobs (SC Commerce, 2022). **There is no confirmed hyperscale or AI data center in Horry County or the Grand Strand.**
The big power story is statewide. Google is spending about $3.3 billion on two facilities in Dorchester and Berkeley counties, where it is now Berkeley County’s largest taxpayer (Post and Courier, 2025). Meta has an $800 million site in Aiken County, and NorthMark Strategies has announced a $2.8 billion project (RCR Wireless, 2025). South Carolina does not centrally track how many are coming (Post and Courier, 2025). The connection to Horry runs through the grid and the statehouse, not through a local campus.
The bill you already pay
This is the part that reaches Horry mailboxes. Data centers are the primary driver of the fastest four-year growth in U.S. electricity demand since 2000 (EIA, 2026). They consumed about 4.4% of U.S. electricity in 2023, projected to reach 6.7% to 12% by 2028 (LBNL, 2024). Peer-reviewed work from Carnegie Mellon, NC State, and others projects data-center and crypto growth could raise U.S. electricity costs about 6% to 29% on average by 2030, and up to 57% in the hardest-hit regions (Carnegie Mellon, 2026).
South Carolina’s own institutions are already acting, which tells you the risk is real. In April 2025, Santee Cooper, the state-owned utility, unanimously enacted an experimental rate for large-load customers of 50 megawatts or more: higher rates, roughly 15-year contracts, upfront payment for transmission, and early-exit penalties, all to keep existing ratepayers from eating “stranded costs” (Post and Courier, 2025). CEO Jimmy Staton has said data centers drive about two-thirds of the new capacity the utility must build, with large-load demand projected to climb from about 200 megawatts today to as much as 1,000 by 2030 (RCR Wireless, 2025).
Your bill is rising before any of that hits. Dominion Energy South Carolina settled a hike of about 7.6%, roughly $12 a month, taking effect around July 2026 (SC Daily Gazette, 2026). Duke Energy Progress customers in the Pee Dee saw about 8%, roughly $11 a month, on February 1, 2026 (SC Daily Gazette, 2026). That is the baseline residents feel already, before data-center demand adds pressure. And unlike Santee Cooper’s voluntary tariff, **protection at the investor-owned utilities is thinner**: the enacted H3309 Energy Security Act had its ratepayer-protection language stripped before passage, while a moratorium bill (H.5286, co-sponsored by Horry’s Rep. Bill Hardee) and a ratepayer-protection bill (H5215) remain proposed, not law (SC Legislature, 2026).
What to watch
Strip away the celebrity and the shaky statistic and the story is straightforward. Data centers bring real capital and a real tax base, genuinely high-paying trades work, and the connectivity backbone that facilities like DC BLOX already provide. They also bring sustained power and water demand onto a grid where bills are climbing, very few permanent jobs, and a documented risk that ordinary ratepayers subsidize the buildout. Even Rowe, who wants them built, concedes most of the country is uneasy.
The accurate core of this debate is not that three-quarters of Americans “dislike” data centers. It is that **South Carolina’s own utility and legislature are moving to make sure the people who benefit from these facilities are the ones who pay for the grid to serve them.** Whether that protection holds at Dominion and Duke, and whether Horry County adopts its own zoning rules before a larger project ever comes calling, is the question worth following. Watch the rate cases and the statehouse votes, not the viral post.
Further Reading
South Carolina data centers – Gallup, “Americans Oppose AI Data Centers in Their Area,” 2026 — https://news.gallup.com/poll/709772/americans-oppose-data-centers-area.aspx
South Carolina data centers – Heatmap Pro / Embold Research, “Americans Now Overwhelmingly Oppose New Data Centers Near Them,” 2026 — https://heatmap.news/politics/americans-oppose-data-centers-poll
South Carolina data centers – CBS News / YouGov, “More oppose than favor data centers in their area,” 2026 — https://www.cbsnews.com/news/americans-data-centers-in-their-area-opinion-poll/
South Carolina data centers – Mike Rowe, “Reflecting on the Energy and Innovation Summit,” 2025 — https://mikerowe.com/2025/07/reflecting-on-the-energy-and-innovation-summit/
South Carolina data centers – The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe, Ep. 494 (Scott Bessent), 2026 — https://singjupost.com/transcript-of-scott-bessent-interview-the-way-i-heard-it-with-mike-rowe/
South Carolina data centers – Fortune, “Mike Rowe on data center electricians making up to $280,000 a year,” 2026 — https://fortune.com/2026/03/19/mike-rowe-dirty-jobs-host-skilled-trade-warning-education-alarm-gen-z-six-figure-careers-data-center-electricans/
South Carolina data centers – Fox Business, “Meta, Mike Rowe launch skilled trades academy for AI data center jobs,” 2026 — https://www.foxbusiness.com/media/america-cant-compete-with-china-ai-without-these-workers-metas-president-says
South Carolina data centers – DC BLOX, “DC BLOX to Expand Myrtle Beach Cable Landing Station,” 2025 — https://www.dcblox.com/dc-blox-to-expand-myrtle-beach-cable-landing-station/
South Carolina data centers – SC Dept. of Commerce / NESA, DC BLOX Horry County announcement, 2022 — https://www.sccommerce.com/news/dc-blox-growing-sc-footprint-new-data-center-horry-county
South Carolina data centers – SC Legislature, H.5286 Data Center Moratorium, 2026 — https://www.scstatehouse.gov/sess126_2025-2026/bills/5286.htm
South Carolina data centers – SC Legislature, H5215 Ratepayer Protection Act, 2025 — https://www.scstatehouse.gov/sess126_2025-2026/bills/5215.htm
South Carolina data centers – U.S. EIA, Short-Term Energy Outlook, 2026 — https://www.eia.gov/pressroom/releases/press582.php
South Carolina data centers – Lawrence Berkeley National Lab / DOE, 2024 U.S. Data Center Energy Usage Report, 2024 — https://eta.lbl.gov/publications/2024-lbnl-data-center-energy-usage-report
South Carolina data centers – Carnegie Mellon / NC State et al., data centers and electricity bills, 2026 — https://www.cmu.edu/work-that-matters/energy-innovation/data-center-growth-could-increase-electricity-bills
South Carolina data centers – Post and Courier editorial, Santee Cooper large-load rate, 2025 — https://www.postandcourier.com/opinion/editorials/santee-cooper-data-centers-electricity/article_16576d8c-4cf7-4dbb-a98e-560b20906961.html
– SC Daily Gazette, “Dominion Energy settles on proposed 7% electricity rate hike,” 2026 — https://scdailygazette.com/2026/05/11/dominion-energy-settles-on-proposed-7-electricity-rate-hike-in-sc/
– RCR Wireless, “AI boom sparks energy showdown in South Carolina,” 2025 — https://www.rcrwireless.com/20250429/ai-infrastructure/ai-boom-energy-showdown
