Voters fiercely reject data centers

Fierce pushback to data centers helped carry Democrats to victory in key races across the nation this week, and where the centers were explicitly on the ballot, they lost overwhelmingly.

Midterm voters both rejected industry-backed candidates and overwhelmingly backed resolutions to halt data center construction, dealing a major blow to the sector.

Election Day marked perhaps the biggest test so far for data center sentiment. Technology watchdog groups are seizing on the outcome, stating results show the public is largely rejecting the facilities and the technology they power.

“Data centers represent a fear and an angst that voters have about being replaced by AI, losing their jobs, losing their livelihoods [and] the rising price of energy in their local area,” said Brendan Steinhauser, who managed Sen. John Cornyn’s (R-Texas) 2014 campaign and is now CEO of the Alliance for Secure AI. He added that they were also representative of “corruption” from “Big Tech oligarchs.”

While the economy, high costs at the pump, corruption and the state of democracy topped voters’ list of concerns, exit polls suggest data centers were one of several factors contributing to the blue tsunami Tuesday night.

In an NBC News exit poll, 23 percent of voters said that data centers were “crucial” in their congressional vote, while another 33 percent said they were a “major” factor. Seventy-six percent said they would oppose construction of a new data center in their community.

“This is an issue that really defined affordability for folks, and governors, senators, House-elect members all saw it as a huge opportunity,” Lori Lodes, president of Climate Power, told reporters.

Concerns around data centers were seen in several battleground races up and down the ballot, notably in Ohio and Texas.

League of Conservation Voters President Pete Maysmith pointed to the Ohio Senate contest, calling it “a really clear example where [Sen.] Jon Husted [R] voted for massive tax giveaways — tax breaks for data center developers — and that was litigated extensively in that race, and it cost them, and it helped propel [former Sen.] Sherrod Brown [D] to winning that race.”

Earlier in the year, the National Republican Senatorial Committee had warned that data centers were an “anchor hanging around Husted’s neck.”

Further, Husted and several Republicans could not distance themselves from the anti-regulatory stance of President Trump, who has backed data centers even as public opposition to them has grown.

Data centers are one of the only tangible representations of AI development, drawing backlash as part of a wider pushback on the technology. Coupled with concerns around the facilities’ impact on local communities and the environment, several Democrats used data centers as a political weapon.

While Democrats coalesced around the issue about a year before the election, a growing number of Republicans, including Texas. Gov Greg Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxtron, abruptly switched their views as backlash grew.

Abbott lost the governor’s seat to Texas state Rep. Gina Hinojosa (D), and Paxton lost the open Senate seat to state Rep. James Talarico (D).

Abbott surprised the nation earlier this year when he said the state would stop issuing new permits for data centers. (Advocacy group Public Citizen found that some permits were still being issued despite the pledge, leading the state to shut down its automatic system).

The announcement to halt permits came after the GOP governor previously stated that Texas would be the “epicenter of AI development” last year, before an immense swell in public backlash.

On the campaign trail, Hinojosa repeatedly hammered Abbott over his recent switch on data centers, calling his recent move to pause state data center permits “in name only.” She has vowed to establish a moratorium on data center construction, with her win Tuesday night throwing Texas’s data center buildout into uncertainty.

Steinhauser said he believes that if Abbott “would have come out earlier stronger, not only for a moratorium, but maybe for restrictions, holding big tech more accountable, he might have performed better.”

“But again, to lose by the amount of votes he’s losing by, it’d be hard for me to say that he would have won,” Steinhauser said.

For the industry, the Texas gubernatorial race could have significant consequences.

“For AI, the Hinojosa win is truly earth-shaking. The data center buildout is a Texas story, with only slight exaggeration,” former Democratic Rep. Brad Carson (Okla.) wrote on X. Carson is the president of Americans for Responsible Innovation, a nonprofit pushing for AI safety guardrails.

Like other Democrats, Hinojosa took the populist approach towards data centers, tuning into voters’ sentiment about the ultrawealthy who may own the facilities.

Shaunna Thomas, the executive director of the populist, labor-backed super PAC Guardrails Alliance, said Tuesday’s results showed “data center backlash is one of the most bipartisan political issues of our time as people across the country face noise pollution, rate hikes and Big Tech trying to steamroll local governments.”

“Americans of every political persuasion are sick and tired of the AI industry trying to control every aspect of our lives, building data centers in our communities, profiting off our data and trying to control who represents us in government,” Thomas told The Hill.

Out of 41 local ballot measures to restrict data center construction, voters were against the centers on all but one. Ohio, which is home to more than 200 data centers, accounted for 21 of these.

Dan Diorio, vice president of state policy and government affairs at the industry group Data Center Coalition, said in a statement the organization “looks forward to working with federal, state, and local policymakers, communities, and other stakeholders to earn trust, support responsible data center growth, and help build a stronger economic future for every American.”

Diorio added that the industry “will continue to engage with residents and local leaders to understand community priorities and ensure that the growth of digital infrastructure delivers clear benefits that communities across the nation are seeking.”

Still, many techno-optimists don’t agree that data centers played a large role in races.

The election “was a referendum on Trump and his economy … efforts to try to deem it an Al election or a data center election are just wish-casting,” Adam Kovacevich, founder and CEO of the center-left tech policy group Chamber of Congress, told The Hill.

Chris Johnson, a GOP strategist focused on energy policy, said data centers were not the “most salient issue” this midterm cycle, but “it does get wrapped up as part of the affordability conversation especially as it relates to energy prices.”

However, Elon Musk, who reportedly poured at least $474 million into the midterms, appeared to acknowledge the facilities’ unpopularity in a post on X, writing, “Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now.”