Opponents of AI data centres were among the biggest winners of Tuesday's midterm elections, Reuters reported on November 4. In Texas — which GLJ Research estimates holds about a quarter of the US data-centre capacity due online by 2030 — Democrat Gina Hinojosa ousted Governor Greg Abbott after promising a moratorium on new data-centre construction, stricter water and power rules and an end to industry tax breaks; the Associated Press called the race at 11:17pm Eastern, and Hinojosa led 52.8% to 45.7% with about 93.5% of the expected vote counted. In Georgia, where CBRE says Atlanta is the country's most active data-centre construction market, Keisha Lance Bottoms won the governorship on a call for a pause on new builds.

The local votes went the same way. Voters in 10 states faced 41 data-centre measures, Ballotpedia counted — 21 of them in Ohio alone — and by Wednesday 33 measures restricting data centres had passed or were leading, according to Stateline's tracker. In Ohio, Democrat Amy Acton beat Vivek Ramaswamy on a conditional freeze of new approvals unless strict energy and water criteria are met. An NBC exit poll found 56% of voters said AI and data centres were a crucial or major factor in their congressional vote.

The results are still unofficial, and what the new governors can actually do depends on state law and their legislatures — the pledges also differ in strength, from an immediate moratorium in Texas to a temporary pause in Georgia and a conditional freeze in Ohio. But investors told Reuters the breadth of the Democratic wave points to a shifting public mood on AI and a possible slowdown of the construction boom that has been propping up US growth and stock markets. This follows the Wire's November 3 entry on the moratorium pledges that were on the ballot.

Update, midday November 4: the market has started pricing the backlash in. Nasdaq-100 futures fell 0.8% overnight, shares in AI cloud company CoreWeave dropped 7% and Oracle 4% in overnight trading, CNBC reported. The exposure is concentrated exactly where the votes landed: Wells Fargo puts 27% of the gigawatts of planned US data-centre capacity in Texas, 7% in Georgia and 5% each in Ohio and Pennsylvania — and OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta and xAI all need vast new capacity in precisely those kinds of states.