Data center developers are set to face a more restrictive building environment after voters across the country elected candidates who favor moratoriums and approved ballot measures that put new obstacles in the way of expansion, delivering a stinging blow to a central pillar of the AI industry.
Of voters polled by NBC News on Election Day, 76 percent said they opposed data centers in their communities. Voters also weighed in directly through 45 local ballot measures nationwide, and as of Wednesday morning, 33 of those had produced results that restrict development, according to a site compiled by Redbud Consulting. The Town of Wells, Maine, favored a 180-day moratorium on large data centers, backdated to mid-June 2026. Several cities in Ohio voted to ban data centers over 25MW, and El Dorado, Kansas, voted to ban facilities with a peak electrical load above 10MW for 10 years.
Texas produced some of the night's biggest upsets. Democratic state Rep. Gina Hinojosa, who supports a statewide moratorium, took the governor's seat from Republican incumbent Greg Abbott in a state with the second-highest number of planned data centers. Abbott had taken a more measured approach, announcing an audit this summer that could slow new developments from connecting to the state energy grid. In a landmark Senate race, Democratic state Rep. James Talarico defeated Attorney General Ken Paxton. Both wanted to remove some tax exemptions and make data centers cover their own energy infrastructure costs, but Talarico emphasized the facilities' environmental impact and sharing profits with the public, while Paxton focused on keeping Chinese tech out of data centers.
In Ohio, Democrat Sherrod Brown won back his former Senate seat from Republican incumbent Jon Husted, whom Brown had labeled "the face of data centers." The National Republican Senatorial Committee warned in a leaked memo this summer that if data centers were blamed for a potential Husted loss, it would make them seem poisonous to future candidates. Brown has not gone as far as calling for a moratorium, but says developers should not get tax breaks or a go-ahead without local input.
Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, a former public health official, won the Senate race over Republican former Rep. Mike Rogers. El-Sayed was one of the earliest politicians to stake out a position on the issue, calling for a pause on new developments "until we can do it safely and with federal protections." In Maine, Democrat and former state Sen. Troy Jackson ousted Republican Sen. Susan Collins. The state legislature had passed what would have been the country's first moratorium on data centers, but the governor vetoed it. Jackson supported a state moratorium, while Collins opposed one and called for more local control and protection for energy ratepayers.
Not every winner favored sweeping limits. In Florida, Republican Rep. Byron Donalds, who opposed an outright ban and introduced the Protecting Ratepayers Act in Congress to make developers pay for their own energy and water needs, defeated Democratic former congressman David Jolly, who said he would bar hyperscalers for a year beginning on day one in office. The race was closer than expected in the Republican stronghold: as of Wednesday morning, NBC News reported Donalds at exactly 50 percent of the vote to Jolly's 48.7 percent, with 99 percent of expected votes counted. Iowa's Democratic Governor-elect Rob Sand also opposed the moratorium his challenger favored, though both agreed on ending tax breaks.
Elsewhere, Democratic incumbent Gov. Josh Shapiro held his seat in Pennsylvania after signing an executive order barring nondisclosure agreements for data center developments and taking AI data center proposals off the fast track. In Nevada, Democratic Attorney General Aaron Ford flipped the governor's seat from Republican Joe Lombardo, whom he branded "data center Joe." Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms won Georgia's governorship while favoring a moratorium to review environmental and cost effects. Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs and Attorney General Kris Mayes both held on, with Mayes endorsing a state moratorium. In Wisconsin, Democrat David Crowley won the governor's race after beating a pro-moratorium primary opponent, and in South Carolina, Democratic pediatrician Annie Andrews flipped a Senate seat while backing a two-year moratorium against an incumbent who drew significant support from a super PAC allied with the data center industry.
It is hard to draw a direct line from data center backlash to any single result, and some candidates who favored more limited restrictions still prevailed. But even those winners were forced to engage on data center issues during their campaigns, and they will likely face continued pressure to put at least some guardrails in place.
