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Voters Said No to AI Data Centres in 40 of 41 Ballots
Voters rejected AI data-centre projects in 40 of 41 local ballot measures on November 3, and candidates who backed moratoriums won governorships in Texas, Georgia and Ohio.
The 2026 midterms were fought on many issues, and one of them was a building type. In a CNBC voter poll, 56% of voters said data centres were a crucial or major factor in their vote, and in local ballot measures on AI data-centre projects voters sided against the projects in 40 of 41 cases. Aidan Yao of the Amundi Investment Institute told Reuters the vote was more "a referendum on AI than a referendum on (Donald) Trump."
The statewide results matter more for investors, because states control most of the approvals. In Texas, Democrat Gina Hinojosa, who had pledged a data-centre moratorium, unseated Governor Greg Abbott, ending three decades of Republican control of the office; Texas accounts for about a quarter of the US data-centre capacity due online by 2030, according to GLJ Research. In Georgia, Keisha Lance Bottoms won the governorship, and Atlanta is the most active data-centre construction market in the country, according to CBRE. In Ohio, Amy Acton won.
The concerns that carried the vote are local and specific: critics say data centres raise utility bills, light up the night sky and create too few jobs and too little tax revenue to justify state incentives. Ohio had already stopped considering new requests for data-centre tax exemptions, and Morgan Stanley flagged a significant risk of delay for a 10-gigawatt project linked to Nvidia, the state's largest. Before the vote, Data Center Watch had counted at least 45 projects worth $68 billion disrupted by local opposition in the second quarter alone.
Analysts disagree on how far it goes. Goldman Sachs estimated that Democratic state and local wins could temporarily halt projects affecting about 45% of planned US data-centre capacity expansion, but expects the effect to be short-lived. HSBC's Max Kettner and Duncan Toms think more regulation and oversight is more likely than broad moratoriums, with projects shifting from Texas to other states. Any federal law would still need President Trump's signature.
The vote changes the calculation for the companies that build and power AI. Permits, power contracts and local tax deals become a bigger part of the cost of capacity, and projects in friendly states become more valuable. For investors, the useful habit is to look up where a company's next data centres are planned, not only how many it plans to build.
Sources: Reuters (via Yahoo Finance) — Analysis: Trump's midterm drubbing demonstrates the power of data center opponents (Nov 4, 2026); CNBC — Apple and other big tech stocks surge after 2026 midterm elections (Nov 4, 2026); Investing.com (via Yahoo Finance) — AI data center stocks drop as Democrats sweep U.S. midterms (Nov 4, 2026)