Voters rebuff data centers in every ballot measure except one during the 2026 midterms
Voters in the states at the heart of the AI data center boom pushed back on the buildout on Election Night.
Key points
- Voters rejected data center restrictions in all but one of 41 local ballot measures across 10 states.
- Democrats who backed pausing or regulating data centers won key races in Ohio, Wisconsin, Georgia and Texas.
- Rep. Greg Casar called for AI company CEOs to testify under oath after Democrats were projected to win the House.
Voters in 10 states weighed in on 41 local ballot measures Tuesday that would have placed restrictions on data center construction, according to Ballotpedia. Voters sided against data centers in every measure except one, in Harwood, North Dakota, based on a Ballotpedia analysis and additional results gathered by CNBC.
In Harwood, voters rejected a charter rule amendment that would have required extra review before city approval of industrial developments, including data centers. Ohio had the most measures on the ballot, with 21, according to Ballotpedia.
Ohio races and the AI campus
In Ohio, Democrat Sherrod Brown ousted Republican Sen. Jon Husted, who had been cast by his opponent as "the face of data centers." Democrat Amy Acton, a physician, defeated Republican businessman Vivek Ramaswamy in the governor's race; Acton supports a "conditional moratorium" on data centers to ensure they cover 100% of utility costs and "exclusively build with union labor."
OpenAI announced in August that it secured 8 gigawatts of computing capacity at the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus in Ohio, described as the largest planned AI data center campus in the world. SoftBank and SB Energy are developing the campus with the U.S. Department of Energy, and Nvidia is also backstopping the project, which could cost more than $500 billion in total.
Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now
— Elon Musk
Voter priorities and industry reaction
In a CNBC Voter Poll, 56% of voters said data centers were a crucial or major factor in their decision, with Democrats ranking the issue higher than Republicans. Communities in California, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, New Jersey, Nevada and Wisconsin also voted on the issue.
In Texas, Gina Hinojosa unseated Gov. Greg Abbott after blaming him for the rapid buildout of data centers. Within hours of polls closing, Rep. Greg Casar, who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, called for AI company CEOs to testify under oath, saying the data center fight is "just the early tremor of a much bigger AI earthquake upending American politics."
