The artificial intelligence data center boom hit a roadblock on election night, further complicating the tech industry’s historic expansion plans.
There were 41 local ballot measures in 10 states up for a vote on Tuesday that would place restrictions on the construction of data centers in different ways, according to Ballotpedia.
Voters sided against data centers in each measure except one in Harwood, North Dakota, according to an analysis by Ballotpedia and additional results gathered by CNBC on Wednesday.
The City of Harwood voted against a charter rule amendment that would have required additional review before city approval of industrial developments, including data centers.
In Ohio, where Democrat Sherrod Brown ousted Republican Sen. Jon Husted after casting the incumbent as “the face of data centers,” 21 local measures were up for a vote, according to Ballotpedia.
The Buckeye State, which was named America’s Top State for Business in 2026 by CNBC, has become a key battleground for the issue.
OpenAI announced in August that it secured 8 gigawatts of computing capacity at the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus in Ohio, the largest planned AI data center campus in the world. The first phase of construction is slated to begin this year, and capacity is expected to come online in phases starting in 2028, according to the project’s website.
SoftBank and SB Energy are developing the Ohio data center campus in partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy. SoftBank is a major investor in OpenAI, and the two companies announced plans to invest $1 billion in SB Energy earlier this year.
Nvidia is also backstopping the project, which could cost more than $500 billion in total.
The Ohio governor’s mansion also turned blue, as Democrat Amy Acton, a physician, defeated Republican businessman Vivek Ramaswamy. Acton supports a “conditional moratorium” on data centers to ensure they cover 100% of utility costs and “exclusively build with union labor.”
Heading into the election, the AI trade was already faltering on Wall Street, with chipmakers, neoclouds and other data center-related companies selling off in October on concerns about rising interest rates and overspending. The hyperscalers — Alphabet , Amazon , Microsoft and Meta — are each spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year on AI infrastructure to meet what they say is insatiable demand. All of those companies except Microsoft have turned cash flow negative in the process.
Getting data center projects off the ground may have just gotten a lot harder.
Communities in California, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, New Jersey, Nevada and Wisconsin also went to the polls to weigh in on the issue, according to Ballotpedia, and data centers were a key motivating factor for voters in matters up and down the ballot.
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.
Democrats who campaigned on pausing or regulating new projects won key races in Ohio, Wisconsin, Georgia and Texas, which is on track to become the world’s largest data center market by 2030.
In one of the biggest results of the night for Democrats, Gina Hinojosa unseated Gov. Greg Abbott after blaming the Republican incumbent for the rapid buildout of data centers across Texas, saying he put the tech industry’s interests ahead of local communities.
Silicon Valley spent record sums trying to shape the 2026 midterms, with the GOP boasting a commanding advantage among the election’s biggest donors. According to a CNBC analysis of Federal Election Commission records, 14 of the 20 largest donor groups backed Republicans almost exclusively. Crypto, AI and online gambling interests poured in more than $377 million.
Elon Musk, who spent hundreds of millions of dollars this election cycle, largely came up empty.
“Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now,” Musk wrote in a post on X.
The Texas results appear to be a warning sign for the AI industry as a whole.
Within hours of the polls closing, Democrats were already calling for AI executives to testify under oath.
Among the first to seize on the results was Rep. Greg Casar, the Texas Democrat who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
“The House Democratic majority must make it a top priority to protect Americans’ jobs, freedom, and lives from AI billionaires,” Casar said in a statement after Democrats were projected to win the House. “AI company CEOs should be called to testify under oath.”
Casar also accused Republicans of being “bought and paid for by AI billionaires,” arguing that voters had rejected that influence and warning Democrats to “hold them accountable instead of cashing their checks.”
He said the data center fight is only the beginning.
“The revolt against data centers was one of the top issues of the 2026 election,” he said. “And in a few years we will look back on it as just the early tremor of a much bigger AI earthquake upending American politics.”
— CNBC’s Ashley Capoot contributed to this article.
WATCH: Data center backlash raises questions over U.S. AI capex growth

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After a bruising defeat for Republicans, House Speaker Mike Johnson does not plan to stay on as Republican leader in the new Congress, according to a source familiar with his plans who was not authorized to discuss them publicly.
The Louisiana Republican served two terms as speaker, elected after his predecessor, California Rep. Kevin McCarthy, was ousted in 2023.
Johnson’s decision will open a role for the top House leadership position in the minority. Republicans are scheduled to hold their leadership elections on Nov. 10.
Historically, the president’s party loses seats in midterm elections. The blue wave soared past the expectations of many in Washington, flipping seats in traditionally red states that the president has won previously.
Johnson nodded to that history in remarks Tuesday night.
“From the first day of this election, we knew that to keep the House and sustain our majority, we would have to defy more than a century of midterm history. It’s only happened twice in 90 years that a sitting president has picked up or held seats for his party in that first two-year cycle. There’s a lot of reasons for it. It’s very, very difficult to overcome, and it looks like history will be kept tonight,” he said.
Johnson worked closely with the Trump administration throughout his tenure as speaker, and endured the balancing act of trying to keep his conference united with the narrowest of majorities. His razor thin majority meant even one Republican defection meant GOP priorities were at risk.
That dynamic will not be replicated for the presumptive next House Speaker, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York. While there are a handful of lawmakers elected with support of the Democratic Socialists of America, eager to push the party further to the left, the comfortable margin for Jeffries means he will likely be able to achieve his priorities, even with defections.
His speakership would be history making — he would be the first Black lawmaker elected to the position.

The 37-year-old is now the state’s first elected Democratic Senator in nearly four decades—and his unlikely path to Washington began as a public school teacher.
Talarico started his working career teaching sixth grade at Rhodes Middle School, a high-poverty area in San Antonio, when he recognized how state policies were hurting his students.
The then-23-year-old educator witnessed the impacts of massive budget cuts that wiped out critical resources from kids living in an already underserved area; in 2011 the Texas Legislature cut $5.4 billion in public school funding following a budget shortfall. The loss of support for the state’s poorest students—and the strife of underpaid and overworked teachers—inspired his pursuit of public office just a few short years later.
“I served my students on the West Side and served their families and really saw the impacts of economic injustice up close and personal,” Talarico told Austin PBS last year. “That experience is what motivated me to then run for office, because I saw students slipping through the cracks, I saw teachers driving Ubers at night to make extra money, I saw teachers selling their own blood plasma to make ends meet. And I knew that was wrong.”
The average middle school teacher in Texas makes $63,400 annually, according to USAFacts, and is ranked in the bottom half of U.S. states when it comes to pay.
Fortune reached out to James Talarico for Texas for comment.
Meet the struggling student who inspired Talarico’s political career
Talarico only taught in Texas’ public school system for two years before taking his ambitions to non-profits and politics. Yet one student’s story in his teaching career left a lasting mark—and has been a recurring anecdote during his senatorial campaign trail.
The eighth-generation Texan often recounts the story of one struggling sixth-grader named Justin who emboldened him to run for office. The kid had a tough upbringing, was abandoned by his mother, and had just been kicked out of a previous school for bringing a knife and threatening violence against a teacher.
Talarico made an effort to build a connection, and the 11-year-old was making progress, even gifting him a snowflake cup from the Dollar Tree. But then Justin got into another altercation at school—his “third strike.” Talarico remembers him being carried out of school without his feet ever touching the ground; that was the last time he ever saw Justin.
After doing some digging, he found that the school district therapist appointed to Justin had been eliminated amid Texas’ budget cuts. Students who have been exposed to tough upbringings, violence, and trauma suddenly lost their lifelines of support. Talarico described it as a “radicalizing” experience, and set out to pursue a career in public service.
“I promised myself right then that if I ever got a little bit of power or a little bit of influence, that I would do everything I could with every fiber of my being to stop that from happening again,” Talarico said in a 2025 episode of The Joe Rogan Experience podcast.
Talarico’s rise from middle-school teacher to Texas Senator
After his teaching stint, Talarico went on to become the Central Texas executive director of Reasoning Mind: an education nonprofit focused on math instruction and classroom technology.
In 2017, he launched his first-ever political campaign in running for the Texas House. And the following year, at just 29, Talarico won the special election and the regular election for the district, flipping the seat from Republican to Democrat.
There, he implemented school funding reform and introduced his Whole Student Agenda addressing pupil mental health and various school-related issues.
Talarico has since held onto a seat amid switching to District 50 in 2022, and just last year, announced his Senate bid to challenge the Republican nominee in Texas.
Now, he’s the Lone Star State’s first Democratic Senator elected since 1988, and has the potential to earn a U.S. Senator’s average salary of $174,000. Despite becoming a high-profile political force, he still leads with the lessons from his middle-school teaching days.
“Justin and my students are the ones I think about when I’m at the Capitol,” Talarico continued during the podcast. “They are the criteria that I use to evaluate public policy, not if it’s a Democratic bill or Republican bill, not if it’s going to get me ex-lobbyist support.”

Don Mancini, the creator of the horror movie franchise Chucky, has a few things to clear up about Nicki Minaj’s Election Day post. After the rapper shared an AI-generated image of his killer doll encouraging people to vote Republican, Mancini responded Wednesday with a series of posts explaining why Chucky would have voted Democrat.
“HAPPY ELECTION DAY!!!” Minaj wrote Tuesday, alongside an AI-generated image of Chucky in a pink suit, sporting a “Vote Red” badge. Mancini replied directly to the post.
“IMPOSTER. CHUCKY IS PART OF THE BLUE WAVE THAT WILL WASH AWAY ALL THE CORRUPTION,” he wrote.
In a separate post, Mancini spelled out a few of the character’s objections to being drafted into MAGA.
“Chucky has a trans kid. Chucky protects the dolls. Chucky is anti-ICE. Chucky says ‘A BLUE WAVE is coming, as BLUE as my fuckin’ eyes!’”
Mancini followed up with a photo of a Chucky doll with blue hair. “Too bad, Nicki! No AI, by the way!” he wrote, adding the hashtag #bluewave.
Minaj has turned to Chucky before when posting about politics. In January, she shared an image of the doll while attacking Don Lemon over his coverage of an anti-ICE protest at a church in St. Paul, Minnesota. She used a homophobic slur against the journalist and demanded his arrest. Later, she posted another image of Chucky, this time raising a middle finger.
“I’m glad they’re angry. They’re about to get angrier,” she wrote at the time.
Meanwhile, Chucky’s family history has been part of the franchise’s lore for decades. His child Glen/Glenda was central to 2004’s Seed of Chucky. In the second episode of the Chucky TV series, the murderous doll tells its teenage protagonist, Jake, “You know, I have a queer kid.” He then specifies that his child is genderfluid.
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“And you’re cool with it?” Jake asks.
“I’m not a monster, Jake,” Chucky replies.

Democrats in the United States have scored a major victory in midterm elections, taking control of both chambers of Congress in a stinging rebuke of President Donald Trump and his Republican Party.
The results are being carefully watched outside the US, as foreign leaders consider how the new political reality in Washington could affect US foreign policy – from the conflict with Iran to the Russia-Ukraine war and trade relations.
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Trump himself has acknowledged the US-Israel war on Iran likely impacted his party’s poor performance in the elections, saying voters were probably not ready “for the short-term consequence of the price of gasoline”.
Here are the latest reactions from world leaders, as the scale of the Democratic victory continues to emerge:
European Union
European Parliament Vice President Christel Schaldemose said the US results left her “cautiously optimistic on Europe’s behalf”.
“Not because everything now ⁠⁠changes for the better, but because it could benefit the support for Ukraine, the green transition, and ⁠⁠relations with the rest of the world,” said Schaldemose in a post on X.
“But the EU must continue the course of standing stronger and standing on its own two feet. That’s not up for debate,” she added.
Iran
Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who is also the chief negotiator in talks with the US, said voters had rejected conflict.
“Americans said NO TO WAR, and we endorse this message,” wrote Ghalibaf in a post on X.
“If the US govt betrays their public will to serve international paymasters and blackmailers, it will learn our NO comes with a Nightmare,” he added.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, meanwhile, said partisan shifts in Washington would not alter the US’s “hostility” towards Tehran.
“If there are still those who harbour even the slightest hope that the behaviour of the hegemonic system could change through party or factional shifts, or who believe that making concessions to the US could persuade it to abandon its hostility towards the Iranian people, they are gravely mistaken,” said Khamenei in a statement shared by Iranian state media.
Israel
There was no immediate reaction from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a Trump ally whose coalition lost its own majority in Israel’s parliament in elections last week.
However, opposition figure Yair Golan, whose party is in a coalition seeking to replace Netanyahu, said the US vote reveals “just how toxic Netanyahu has become” among US Democrats and Republicans alike.
He warned that if Netanyahu and his far-right government remain in power, Israel would be on “a path toward international sanctions, global isolation, and a confrontation with the United States – our most important friend and ally.”
Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid, also part of the anti-Netanyahu coalition, said the US vote effectively ruled out “any possibility of a unity government led by Netanyahu”.
United Kingdom
Health Minister James Frith stressed that the UK would maintain steady, strong ties with Washington despite an apparent “seismic shift in domestic politics for the Americans”.
“The change of emphasis of power in the States is frequent,” Frith told British media. “But the mainstay of the relationship with the UK Government, as its closest ally, is unwavering and unchanging.”
“So I don’t expect it to change the nature of the relationship at all; it remains very strong,” he added.
France
Finance Minister Roland Lescure said France would wait to see whether Trump, who remains in control of US foreign policy, adjusts his approach.
“Either he decides to rise above the fray – acknowledging that ‌‌changes are necessary, particularly regarding gasoline prices, which directly ‌‌affect people – and, I might add, he tones down his international involvement, or he does not,” Lescure told French TV. “Frankly, this is something we will need to keep an eye on in the ⁠⁠coming days.”
Spain
Left-wing Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said the US Democrats’ landslide victory was emblematic of the “unravelling” of the global far right.
“It happened in Brazil. It just happened in the US. And it will soon happen in Spain,” said Sanchez, whose own premiership is at stake in snap elections he called for November 29 .
Sanchez said US voters had rejected policies that “only ‌‌impoverish”, as well as hate, sexism, climate change denialism and “the privileges of the elites”.
Greece
Government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis said US-Greek relations would not be affected by the election results.
“Greek-American relations will remain strong,” he told local media. “The United States is our strategic ally, and this will continue for major projects ⁠⁠and all major agreements. Nothing will be affected by this outcome. It is obvious that we respect every outcome. The conclusions are clear.”
Russia
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov stressed the need to wait for the final results of US elections to come into focus, but noted that leaders in the US Democratic Party had a “sharply negative” approach to relations with Moscow.
Russia’s position on Ukraine and broader foreign policy “is not based on short-term considerations and, naturally, does not depend on the fluctuations of the political barometer in other countries,” Ryabkov was quoted by Russian state media as saying.
“We will continue our work in accordance with the directives of the President of the Russian Federation,” he added.
Kremlin spokesman ⁠Dmitry Peskov said Moscow hoped the US midterm results would not impact Trump’s “peacemaking efforts”.
China
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said Beijing would continue its “constructive strategic relationship” with the US, stressing that US elections are a “domestic affair”.
“China is willing to work with the US to safeguard and implement the important consensus reached by the two heads of state, strengthen communication, properly manage differences and expand cooperation, build a constructive strategic relationship based on respect and equality,” Mao told reporters in Beijing.
Japan
Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara said whatever the outcome of the US vote, “the Japan-US alliance the is the cornerstone of Japan’s foreign and security policy.”
“As the international situation becomes turbulent and increasingly uncertain, a strong Japan-US alliance is essential for maximising Japan’s national interests and for peace and stability in the international community,” Kihara said at a press briefing.
South Africa
⁠President Cyril Ramaphosa, who has clashed with Trump over the US president’s promotion of debunked claims of a white genocide in South Africa, said the election marks “a new era in world relations”.
“We have seen that the ⁠⁠Democrats have taken ⁠⁠control of the Senate and of ⁠⁠the House, and ⁠⁠the ⁠⁠people of America have spoken,” Ramaphosa told ‌‌reporters.