Midterms: 78% of Newly Elected US Lawmakers Want to Regulate Data Centers
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On election day, the AI industry lost not only Congress but also the states where it is building its biggest data centers.
That is the picture painted by an analysis from Data Center Watch, which examined 950 Democratic and Republican congressional candidates across 470 races and 74 candidates in 36 gubernatorial elections for their documented positions on data center development. Of the 393 members of Congress and senators elected so far, 78 percent support regulating or restricting development: 62 percent favor rules or conditional approvals, 16 percent a ban or moratorium at the federal, state or local level. A further 17 percent have signaled support for regulation at least through their vote on the Ratepayer Protection Act, which is meant to shield electricity customers from the grid costs of data centers. Only three of the 393 winners, less than one percent, took a clear pro-development position without calling for restrictions.
Governors Are Even Stricter
The picture is even clearer in the gubernatorial races, and for the industry that is the more important number: 32 of the 34 declared winners, or 94 percent, support regulation, conditions, bans or moratoriums. Twelve of them, more than a third, want to halt development altogether. Governors control their states‘ permitting agencies, incentive programs and regulators, and can therefore affect projects more directly than Congress, which needs federal legislation to intervene, legislation that would also have to survive Donald Trump’s announced veto.
Positions follow party lines, but not exclusively. Among elected congressional Democrats, 23 percent support bans or moratoriums, compared with 3 percent of Republicans. Among governors, it is 50 percent of Democrats versus 8 percent of Republicans. New Hampshire shows that conservatives are calling for restrictions too: re-elected Republican Governor Kelly Ayotte wants to write a statewide moratorium into the 2027 budget, while her Democratic challenger wanted the same by executive order. According to the analysis, electricity and grid costs, water use, permitting and developers‘ financial obligations were recurring themes in both parties. The question is no longer whether data centers get regulated, but how far.
Texas and Georgia: The Biggest Construction Sites Switch Sides
What matters is where the moratorium supporters won. In Texas, alongside Virginia the most important data center market in the US, Democrat Gina Hinojosa defeated Republican incumbent Greg Abbott. She is calling for an immediate moratorium on new data centers until stronger protections for communities and a reform of incentives are in place. Abbott himself had already ordered certain approvals halted over grid and water concerns. The scale: Texas has at least 248 planned data centers, grid operator ERCOT is vetting 250 to 300 large-load projects with a combined 200 gigawatts of requested capacity, and Google alone has announced 40 billion dollars (roughly 35 billion euros) in cloud and AI investment through 2027.
Georgia elected Keisha Lance Bottoms, who is calling for a statewide construction pause while the economic and community impacts are assessed. According to Georgia Power, 32 large customers there have committed to around 15.6 gigawatts of demand, with 21 projects under construction, including OpenAI’s 20 billion dollar campus (roughly 17.8 billion euros) in Effingham County, which is expected to need 3.2 gigawatts delivered in phases between 2028 and 2032. In Ohio, Amy Acton beat Vivek Ramaswamy in a race where both candidates called for restrictions; Acton wants a conditional moratorium under which operators cover grid costs, meet environmental standards and involve communities. In Michigan, Jocelyn Benson won on a similar platform, while her Republican opponent had proposed his own five-point moratorium. In New Mexico, incoming Governor Deb Haaland wants an immediate halt to large data centers, which chiefly affects Project Jupiter, the Oracle-backed campus in Santa Teresa, where opposition has increasingly focused on the energy infrastructure. New York and Oregon re-elected governors who had already introduced moratoriums and restrictions.
At the congressional level, most moratorium supporters sit in California and New York with seven each, followed by Michigan and New Jersey. Of the 61 elected candidates backing bans, 57 won House races and four won Senate seats. In the established markets of Virginia and Pennsylvania, by contrast, calls for conditions rather than halts prevail.
What Separates a Campaign Promise From a Construction Halt
Data Center Watch itself cautions against overinterpretation: the election results do not mean projects have been blocked or delayed; they change the political and regulatory environment in which future capacity gets built. Whether campaign pledges turn into enforceable rules depends on the scope of executive authority, on legislative majorities in the states, on implementation by agencies, and on how already approved projects are treated. A moratorium in Texas, for example, would have to pass a Republican-dominated legislature, and projects ERCOT has already cleared can hardly be stopped retroactively.
The industry counters that data centers bring tax revenue, construction contracts and grid expansion that states would otherwise have to pay for themselves, and that many of the conditions demanded on the campaign trail, such as operators covering their own grid costs, are by now accepted by hyperscalers anyway. The midterm result is therefore less a construction halt than a price tag: whoever builds data centers in the US from now on will pay more for power, water and consent than before. How markets price that was visible the day after the election, when chip and AI stocks fell worldwide. Data Center Watch has announced a comprehensive post-election report including local ballot measures and a poll on public attitudes.
