As the results of the 2026 U.S. midterm elections come in, data centers—the computing foundation the AI industry values most—are being hauled before the court of local politics. The Verge found that in an NBC poll conducted on Election Day, 76% of surveyed voters opposed building a data center in their own community; consulting firm Redbud Consulting tallied 45 local data-center-related ballot measures across the country, and 33 of them already lean toward restrictions. Voters in Wells, Maine, simply imposed a 180-day pause on large data centers; multiple Ohio cities banned projects using more than 25 megawatts; and El Dorado, Kansas, even wrote a ban on peak loads above 10 megawatts into the next ten years.
Candidates from both parties are being forced to respond, and Democrats are using the anti-expansion backlash to turn the tide
