Voters oppose data centers in nearly every US midterm ballot measure

The lone exception was Harwood, North Dakota, where voters rejected a proposed charter amendment that would have required additional review before city approval of industrial developments, including data centers. Across the country, Ballotpedia counted 41 data-center-related measures in 10 states, and Reason Magazine counted 21 of them in 18 Ohio jurisdictions. Some measures were nonbinding advisory votes, meaning their passage does not automatically stop construction.

The measures ranged from outright prohibitions to requirements for further public approval, and they reflect a backlash against facilities that house the chips and servers used to train and run AI systems. Their appetite for electricity has turned proposed campuses into local fights over utility bills and grid capacity; opponents also raise concerns about water use, noise and deals struck without public scrutiny.

Ohio produced some of the clearest results. More than three-quarters of voters in Hubbard backed a ban, and residents of Granville, Trenton and Sunbury approved restrictions by margins of roughly 78% to 82%. In Piqua, a city of about 20,000 where Meta plans a $1 billion data center with capacity of up to 1.4 gigawatts, voters recalled the mayor and two city commissioners who supported the project.

Elsewhere, nearly 80% of voters in Joliet Township, Illinois, rejected a nonbinding proposal supporting AI data centers, and more than 60% in Janesville, Wisconsin, approved a requirement for another public vote before major development at a former General Motors site linked to a proposed data center. Alhambra, California, was on track to approve a ban by 82%, and voters in El Dorado, Emporia and Ottawa, Kansas, approved data-center restrictions.

The governors-elect campaigned on data-center pauses or restrictions. Texas' governor-elect, Democrat Gina Hinojosa, the state's first Democratic governor in more than 30 years, campaigned on a moratorium on new data center construction until lawmakers establish additional protections for residents. Gordon Johnson of investment adviser GLJ Research said she needs no new law to keep data center permits frozen, potentially stalling 13 gigawatts of planned capacity. Ohio's governor-elect, Democrat Amy Acton, supports a "conditional moratorium" on data centers to ensure they cover 100% of utility costs and "exclusively build with union labor." In Georgia, the third-largest data center market, governor-elect Keisha Lance Bottoms said she would sign an executive order for the pause and review the tax incentives that spurred development.

Wall Street expects the results to slow construction. Technology analyst Dan Ives said the midterms answered whether they would slow the pace of the planned 800 to 1,000 US data centers: "The answer in our view is a clear YES." Goldman Sachs economists said Democratic wins would likely lead to "short-term data center moratoria, potentially affecting about 45% of planned US data center capacity expansion." BlackRock chief executive Larry Fink warned last month that "if we have a moratorium of some sort in this country, we will be in a recession," and industry leaders have warned that blanket restrictions put US AI investment at risk.

The industry has spent recent months courting communities. OpenAI has sought to rebrand its facilities as "compute campuses," Amazon announced "Built Together," pledging more than $1 billion over five years to communities hosting its data centers, and Microsoft promised to cover power infrastructure costs and stop seeking local property-tax breaks. Late Tuesday, Elon Musk posted on X: "Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now."

Rep. Greg Casar of Texas, who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said AI company CEOs "should be called to testify under oath" and called the revolt "just the early tremor of a much bigger AI earthquake upending American politics." Michael Whitesides, deputy communications director for Local Progress, a network of local elected officials, said voters "don't want to see data centers in their backyards" and predicted Big Tech would keep trying to "buy and bully local officials."