A wave of candidates who campaigned against AI data centers won office in the US midterm elections on November 4, 2026, helping Democrats seize control of both the Senate and the House while also unseating Republican governors in key data center markets.

Opposition to gigawatt-scale campus developments proved a powerful force at the ballot box, with communities in many states organizing against planned projects over concerns about electricity and water supplies, along with the effect of artificial intelligence on jobs.

The largest market to flip: Texas

The most consequential result for the industry came in Texas, the second-largest data center market in the world, where 6.5GW of capacity is currently under development. Democrat Gina Hinojosa defeated incumbent Republican Greg Abbott, ending years of a governorship that had broadly welcomed the sector.

Abbott's relationship with the industry had grown complicated over the summer, when he introduced a temporary moratorium on new projects so that ERCOT, the state's grid operator, could audit interconnection requests from large load users.

Hinojosa dismissed the move as a "scam," saying: "Abbott will likely lift it on November 4, right after the election. The only way Texans are protected is when real laws are passed." Her campaign website demanded "an immediate moratorium on data centers to last until the legislature can meet to put in place real protections so Texans can have a seat at the table to decide if and how data centers come into their communities."

Texas result hits Elon Musk's TeraFab plans

The change of leadership in Austin lands hardest on Elon Musk, who relocated his businesses from California to Texas in 2020 to benefit from the state's low-tax, low-regulation environment.

Musk, a supporter of President Trump, spent roughly $474 million backing Republican candidates in the midterms, and is planning a vast silicon chip plant known as TeraFab in Grimes County, which would supply SpaceX, its AI division SpaceXAI, and carmaker Tesla.

In June, local councilors granted the TeraFab a 100 percent property tax abatement, a decision that angered many residents. Reacting to the results, Musk tweeted: "Guess my election-interfering space lasers didn't work this time," followed by a suggestion that "data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now." SpaceX is among several companies exploring the placement of AI compute in orbit.

Gubernatorial wins driven by anti-data center pledges

Across the country, 26 candidates in 21 of the 36 governorships contested ran on platforms promising anti-data center legislation. Democrats gained five of these offices, with one result still outstanding.

Beyond Texas, Ohio saw its Governor's office move from Republican to Democratic hands, as Amy Acton beat Vivek Ramaswamy in the contest to succeed outgoing Governor Mike DeWine.

Acton had argued before the vote that data centers are "undermining Ohio's core values," and laid out her terms: "I support a conditional moratorium on data centers to ensure they cover one hundred percent of their utility costs, exclusively build with union labor, operate with full transparency, support the needs of local communities, live by Ohio's environmental standards, and bring jobs to former industrial areas that have been left behind." She added: "Ohio is open for business, but we are not up for sale."

Ramaswamy, for his part, had declined to call for a moratorium. Georgia delivered a historic outcome, with Democratic nominee Keisha Lance Bottoms set to become the first black female governor in US history. Lance Bottoms campaigned for a statewide pause on data center construction, saying: "Let us take a pause, assess fully, assess comprehensively, assess the impact that these data centers are having on our environment, on our utility bills, what it means to have them in communities."

Her Republican opponent, billionaire Rick Jackson, took a different view, arguing that county authorities should decide whether to host data centers and pointing to the tax revenues they can generate.

Jackson is reportedly an investor in a data center project in Bowie County, Texas.

Incumbents who imposed restrictions prevail

The election also rewarded sitting governors who had already moved to constrain the sector. In Pennsylvania, Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro, who brought in strict data center legislation over the summer, secured re-election. In New York, Kathy Hochul also won another term; in July she had become the first governor to enact a statewide data center moratorium, a one-year ban introduced in the Empire State.

Democrats take both chambers of Congress

While results continued to trickle in, the Democrats recorded a gain of seven Senate seats and 25 House seats, giving them control of both chambers for the remainder of President Donald Trump's term.

Trump, a Republican, has been an outspoken champion of AI companies and the data center build-out as a driver of economic growth, putting his agenda on a collision course with the incoming Congress.

Analysts of the result note two wider drivers alongside the data center backlash: rapidly rising living costs in the US and the unpopular war in Iran.

Nevertheless, broad American opposition to data center development figured prominently in the outcome. The shift also reached within Republican ranks, where some candidates who had previously supported the industry reversed course during the campaign, endorsing moratoriums on new projects or other forms of restriction.