A revolt at the ballot box
Communities in ten states voted on 41 local measures dealing with data centers on Tuesday, and voters sided against the projects in all but one, according to Ballotpedia data analyzed by CNBC. The single exception was in Harwood, North Dakota, where residents rejected a charter amendment that would have added review steps for industrial development.
The votes ranged from outright bans to caps on the electricity a facility can draw. Ohio alone had 21 measures. In Joliet, Illinois, nearly 80% of voters backed restrictions on new sites.
Ohio and Texas turn
The issue moved votes up and down the ballot. In Ohio, Democrat Sherrod Brown defeated Republican Senator Jon Husted after describing him as the face of data centers. Democrat Amy Acton, a physician, won the governor's race, beating businessman Vivek Ramaswamy; she supports a conditional moratorium that would require operators to pay all utility costs.
In Texas, Democrat Gina Hinojosa unseated Governor Greg Abbott, campaigning against the pace of the buildout. Texas is expected to become the world's largest data center market by 2030. Ohio hosts the PORTS-Pike campus planned by OpenAI with SoftBank and SB Energy, designed for 8 gigawatts of computing capacity at a cost that could exceed $500 billion.
What it means for the AI buildout
A CNBC voter poll found 56% of voters said data centers were a major or the most important factor in their decision. An earlier UMass Amherst poll found only 11% of Americans would support a data center in their own community.
The votes do not stop construction already permitted, but they slow approvals and raise the cost of new sites. Hyperscalers are spending hundreds of billions a year on AI hardware and buildings, and several have turned cash flow negative in the process. Industry groups argue that restrictions will push projects to other states and raise power prices there.
Democrats in Congress are calling for AI executives to testify under oath. Representative Greg Casar said the fight over data centers is the early tremor of a much bigger political earthquake, a signal that the cost of the AI buildout has become an election issue in its own right.
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