Democratic candidates who promised to stop data centre building won in Texas, Georgia and Ohio on Tuesday. These wins threaten billions in AI investments. Many voters worry about rising electricity bills and pollution. Consequently, Nasdaq 100 futures fell 2.1 per cent as markets reacted to the shift in infrastructure policy.
Gubernatorial wins in Texas, Georgia and Ohio and local ballot measures show depth of discontent with Trump-backed infrastructure spree
Democratic gubernatorial candidates who pledged to halt data centre development swept to victory on Tuesday night, threatening to derail billions of dollars of planned investments for the AI boom over the coming years.
Three states at the centre of the AI build-out -- Texas, Georgia and Ohio -- elected Democratic candidates who have pledged to crack down on data centre construction.
The "blue wave" of results on Tuesday, which also included a number of local ballot measures blocking the building of data centres, marked a sharp rebuke to President Donald Trump's endorsement of the AI infrastructure building spree.
Many Republican candidates had already started to distance themselves from Trump on the issue during the campaign.
AI spending by a small number of Big Tech companies has supported much of the stock market gains since Trump took office. But the power-hungry computing complexes have sparked nationwide anxiety over their impact on air and noise pollution and electricity and water bills.
Futures tracking the Nasdaq 100, which is heavily concentrated in tech stocks, fell 2.1 per cent, while S&P 500 futures dropped 1.2 per cent, setting both markets up to open lower on Wednesday.
Democrat Gina Hinojosa pulled off an upset to beat incumbent governor Greg Abbott in Texas, having promised an immediate moratorium on data centre development in the state.
Texas has lured tech giants including OpenAI, Anthropic, Oracle, Microsoft, Google, Meta and Amazon with tax breaks as well as abundant energy and land.
According to real estate investment group CBRE, Georgia's capital Atlanta has nearly 2.9 gigawatts of data centres under construction, overtaking Northern Virginia as the biggest US data centre construction hub. Democratic gubernatorial candidate and former Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms has promised a temporary statewide pause.
Her opponent, billionaire healthcare executive Rick Jackson, had taken a softer stance, saying such decisions should be left to local communities.
Ohio's Amy Acton, who beat Vivek Ramaswamy in the Ohio gubernatorial election, has also promised a conditional freeze on new approvals if they do not meet strict energy- and water-use criteria.
Trump has championed the build-out, alienating parts of his grassroots base. In September, he doubled down on his position, branding a pushback against data centres and broader concerns about AI safety a "hoax".
But both Republican and Democratic gubernatorial candidates broke with Trump to support a slowdown, in recognition of how politically explosive the issue has become.
According to one NBC exit poll on Tuesday, 56 per cent of respondents said that AI and data centres had been a "crucial or a major factor" in casting their votes for Congress.
"Data centres in space looking pretty appealing right now," Tesla and SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk posted late on Tuesday.
Musk, a close ally of Trump, has committed tens of billions of dollars to AI infrastructure, including his "Colossus" campuses in Tennessee and Mississippi.
Twenty-six gubernatorial candidates across 21 states backed some form of moratorium on data centre development ahead of the midterm elections. Dozens of ballot measures also targeted data centre construction -- with Ohio voters alone facing 21 such initiatives.
Governors' power to change policies around data centres depends on state laws, and some may have to work with legislators to make big changes. Ballot measures, meanwhile, give voters a direct opportunity to register their discontent.
Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Google parent Alphabet alone are on track to spend as much as $740bn on capital expenditure in 2026.
Those numbers are only expected to grow over the coming years, with Nvidia -- the chip designer at the heart of the market boom -- forecasting that global AI infrastructure spending will hit between $3tn and $4tn globally by 2030.
One ballot measure that passed in Trenton, Ohio, would stymie plans by Amazon for a campus there. Several other proposals to block or restrict local data centre construction were on track to win in the state.
In Edgewater, Florida, locals voted 77 per cent to 23 per cent to approve a proposal writing a ban on the construction of data centres into the city charter.
Governors proposing moratoriums are following in the footsteps of Kathy Hochul, who in July made New York the first state to suspend the development of data centres of 50 megawatts or more for one year -- a move Trump derided as a "terrible decision".
BMO Capital Markets analysts wrote ahead of Tuesday's results that the Texas governor race and ballot measures in Ohio would "provide investors with an indication of voter sentiment regarding data centres".
"We worry about tech sector valuations in the event of such an outcome," the analysts wrote.
After first pledging to make Texas an "epicentre" for AI, in September the Republican governor Abbott directed the state's environmental agency to temporarily pause permits for new data centres connecting to the statewide grid, pending an audit.
Abbott's shift in stance came as his Democratic opponent Hinojosa promised an outright halt on all new AI data centre construction, pending new legal safeguards, making it one of the pillars of her campaign.