A “blunami” swept the nation last night as Democrats defeated Republicans to gain control of the House and Senate in a historic midterm landslide. And it looks like data centers played a key role in the outcome.
A lot was on Americans’ minds as they went to the polls. The war on Iran. Cost of living. Brutal immigration policies. Healthcare cuts. Culture wars. For a small number of online weirdos, Anakin Skywalker. Among the hottest issues, though, was one that would’ve barely registered in 2024: AI data centers.
Exit polls conducted by NBC showed that almost a full quarter of voters surveyed counted “AI data centers” as “crucial” to their vote, with over half listing the issue as a “crucial” or “major” factor in their decision. Only a minute 13 percent of voters said data centers were a non-issue.
Asked about the importance of “AI and data centers” to their vote, an overwhelming 56 percent of Americans responded that the issues played a “crucial or major factor” in their ballot.
Opposition to data centers, particularly the massive hyper-scale facilities associated with powering AI, has emerged as a powerful bipartisan issue across the country. The structures have drawn intense pushback from many locals concerned about pollution, loss of natural land, noise — large data centers emit constant, awful screeching — and hikes in energy prices. Local and state lawmakers have faced scrutiny over revelations that many signed non-disclosure agreements with AI companies to keep quiet about the projects, keeping voters in the dark about huge infrastructure deals standing to radically transform their region. Data center fights have also been playing out largely in rural areas, which traditionally skew conservative, making for cross-party coalitions uniting against the AI-powering infrastructure.
As Bloomberg notes, surprise Democratic swings will likely lead to uncertainty for many planned data center projects. The now-former Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, welcomed data centers back in 2025, then in August suddenly moved to implement new regulations on the sites as his re-election race against his opponent, Democrat Gina Hinojosa, tightened. On the campaign trail, Hinojosa called for a moratorium on data center builds until the state held a “legislative session that puts Texans first so that we don’t have any more communities in Texas who are powerless against these global corporations.” Hinajosa won last night in a surprise upset, and while the blue wave in Texas can be chalked up to several issues — immigration, affordability, war — the data center battle seems to epitomize the backlash to establishment politics that pushed Democrats back into power across the country.
Overall, the midterm results were a massive hit to some of the most powerful players in tech and AI. Billionaire tech megadonors including world’s richest man Elon Musk, the investors Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, and OpenAI president Greg Brockman, among others, poured an extraordinary amount of money into the midterms on behalf of Republicans. Now that those efforts failed, data center moratoriums, congressional investigations, and assertive new efforts at regulation are looming large.
More on data centers: Elon Musk in Real Trouble After Humiliating Defeat
The post Americans Just Resoundingly Rejected AI Data Centers appeared first on Futurism.
