随着选举之夜的尘埃落定，民主党人詹姆斯·塔拉里科（James Talarico）的竞选团队对他在得克萨斯州254个县的压倒性胜选感到意外。但即便如此，仍有一个地区表现格外突出。
达拉斯东南部的考夫曼县（Kaufman County）有两个引发当地民众强烈反对的大型数据中心项目正在推进。该县最大的城市福尼（Forney）已着手在本市范围内禁止新建数据中心。
这个一贯支持共和党的县，是亲塔拉里科的超级政治行动委员会“孤星崛起”（Lone Star Rising PAC）锁定的55个县之一，针对的是距离拟建或已获批数据中心项目5英里范围内的选民。该委员会向这些选民发送了一系列邮件和数字广告，将项目归咎于共和党提名候选人肯·帕克斯顿（Ken Paxton）。
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其中一封邮件以收件人的名字称呼选民，写道：“警告：您所在的考夫曼县附近有一个已存在或拟建的数据中心。是肯·帕克斯顿让建设变得更容易了。”
塔拉里科以1个百分点的优势赢得考夫曼县，同时在全州取得惊人的12个百分点的胜利，帮助民主党自1994年以来首次在得克萨斯州赢得全州范围的选举。
这只是众多案例中的一个：对数据中心的反对情绪助力民主党在中期选举中取得惊人胜利。从全州范围的竞选到地方投票倡议，选民展现出对数据中心采取更严格立场的广泛支持，至少是明确反对其继续建设的态度。
根据美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）的选民调查，约四分之一的选民表示人工智能和数据中心对他们在中期选举中的投票“至关重要”，其重要性低于生活成本和腐败等优先议题。但当被问及是否允许在所在社区建设数据中心时，选民以约3比1的压倒性比例表示反对。
“这是一场自下而上的、压倒性的、明确的、跨党派的反对浪潮，在我选区的各个角落都能感受到，”密歇根州众议院当选议员威尔·劳伦斯（Will Lawrence）表示，他在竞选初期就以反对数据中心为核心议题，成功拿下了共和党控制的众议院席位。
共和党候选人必须应对唐纳德·特朗普总统对数据中心的强烈支持立场。到选举最后几周，就连特朗普似乎也承认人工智能产业面临政治问题，他开始提议将人工智能重新命名为“超级智能”。
一些共和党人已开始发出警告，称他们需要在2028年改变这一问题的应对策略。
保守派人工智能政策组织“更美好未来联盟”（Alliance for a Better Future）在选举次日发布备忘录，称“无法忽视超级智能（SI）政策对本次选举的重大影响，以及该政策与经济关切尤其密切的关联”。备忘录敦促共和党人在2028年前“调整方向”并“纠正路线”。
一位参与中期选举的共和党策略师表示，任何希望在下次总统选举中具备竞争力的共和党人“都需要一份更完善的策略手册”。
“经济可能是本次选举的首要议题，但人们忽略的是，人工智能和数据中心引发了大量焦虑情绪，”一位参与中期选举的共和党策略师表示，“人工智能很可能在2028年成为首要议题。”
劳伦斯之所以引人注目，是因为他的竞选活动——早在多久之前——就以数据中心为核心，并采取了激进立场。他在初选的第一条电视广告中，站在一片田野中央，警告称“科技亿万富翁想把整片田野变成巨型数据中心，这会让你的能源账单暴涨，还会毁掉我们的房屋价值”。
劳伦斯在2025年10月出席豪厄尔镇规划委员会会议抗议拟建数据中心时，当时并没有引发全国性的轩然大波。这只是他在整个竞选期间参加的此类会议之一。
但到中期选举结束时，几乎找不到哪个竞选议题没有被候选人争论，跨党派的民意动向迫使各方快速跟进。
民主党候选人普遍对数据中心持强硬态度，劳伦斯等人甚至推动联邦暂停审批数据中心。共和党人有时也会附和出台新限制的呼吁，但同时也强调数据中心的经济效益，并主张有必要在人工智能竞赛中领先中国。
贸易组织“数据中心联盟”（Data Center Coalition）的高级官员丹·迪奥里奥（Dan Diorio）认为，该行业需要更好地向美国人展示数据中心如何解决他们对生活成本的关切。他指出，弗吉尼亚州劳登县的居民正因当地数据中心热潮获得税收减免，不过弗吉尼亚州的政治也因数据中心需求导致电费飙升的问题而发生了改变。
“人们需要亲眼看到、亲身感受到这些好处。”他表示。
俄亥俄州是数据中心的最大战场之一。
参议院选举的获胜者、民主党人谢罗德·布朗（Sherrod Brown）将共和党现任者乔恩·赫斯特德（Jon Husted）贴上“数据中心代言人”的标签，理由是他担任副州长期间支持数据中心投资。这一攻击手段极为有效，以至于共和党参议院全国委员会（NRSC）在8月发布备忘录，警告称数据中心是“套在赫斯特德脖子上的枷锁”。
共和党参议院全国委员会未就本文的置评请求作出回应。
赫斯特德在9月试图化解这一弱点，牵头立法应对数据中心导致的能源成本上升问题，但参议院民主党人否决了该法案。
这场斗争也在地方层面上演。根据反数据中心组织“保护俄亥俄”（Conserve Ohio）的数据，俄亥俄州至少10个城市的选民通过了限制大型数据中心建设的宪章修正案。哥伦布市外的格兰维尔镇的投票措施获得了超过80%的支持率。
在另一个红色州——南卡罗来纳州，民主党人安妮·安德鲁斯（Annie Andrews）在参议院选举中爆冷获胜，她始终将共和党现任者达琳·格雷厄姆（Darline Graham）称为“数据中心达琳”。安德鲁斯拿下了科尔顿县（Colleton County），该县曾以19个百分点的差距支持特朗普。安德鲁斯曾多次前往该县，发声反对当地的数据中心开发项目。
格雷厄姆的这一弱点早在党内初选中就已显现，她在辩论中表示“我们必须建设数据中心”，随后调整了立场，但当时遭到多名共和党同僚的攻击。
与数据中心产业结盟的新超级政治行动委员会“建设未来”（Building the Future）在大选后期全力支持格雷厄姆，为她的竞选花费了250万美元。但这笔支出反而招致更多攻击，称她受制于该产业。
数据中心在其他众议院选举中也以显著方式成为议题。
民主党人米切尔·伯曼（Mitchell Berman）击败了威斯康星州共和党众议员布莱恩·斯蒂尔（Bryan Steil），他在广告中打出了一个标有“数据中心”的飞碟射击目标；而在亚利桑那州第1国会选区，民主党人阿米什·沙阿（Amish Shah）胜出，他直言不讳地表示不希望在自己的选区建任何数据中心。
沙阿的共和党对手杰伊·菲利（Jay Feely）采取了更微妙的立场，而共和党人在周二的惨败后，如今正反思这种立场。
“我们必须在[人工智能]竞赛中获胜，不能让中国赢，”菲利在一次媒体采访中表示，“但与此同时，你必须能与那些不关心中国和这场竞赛、只关心自己生活的人对话，所以你必须论证数据中心为何是必要的。”
得克萨斯州及其他各州展望
在数据中心数量位居全国第二的得克萨斯州，塔拉里科并非唯一以打击数据中心为竞选纲领的全州范围获胜者。当选州长吉娜·伊诺霍萨（Gina Hinojosa）比塔拉里科走得更远，她呼吁暂停审批数据中心，直到州议会出台“真正的保护措施”。
“我们需要暂停推进数据中心项目，直到落实那些保护措施，”伊诺霍萨周四接受CNN记者杰克·塔珀（Jake Tapper）采访时表示，“我们可以拥有强劲的经济、强大的产业，同时保护得克萨斯州民众的利益，这两者并非互斥。”
伊诺霍萨击败了共和党现任州长格雷格·阿博特（Greg Abbott），阿博特花了数月时间试图通过行政措施抢占舆论先机，甚至因“反对数据中心”遭到特朗普的斥责。
在参议院选举中，帕克斯顿在部分数据中心限制措施上与塔拉里科达成一致，但也表示在远离居民区的“大量开阔地带”可以建设数据中心。这一言论被亲塔拉里科团队针对项目周边居民投放的数字广告重点提及。
塔拉里科本人则在广告中走访了一处数据中心建筑工地，试图解释“数据中心为帕克斯顿提供资金支持，获得税收减免，而民众却要承担代价”。
“当广告与更广泛的民众关切相结合时，效果最为显著，”Guardrails Alliance的政治主任查理·布莱特勒（Charlie Blaettler）表示，该组织在中期选举中定位为人工智能产业的制衡力量，“我认为大量反对情绪围绕着数据中心项目的本地化斗争展开，但许多候选人成功将其与生活成本和腐败问题联系起来。”
尽管部分人工智能产业倡导者正在舔舐伤口，但他们已开始展望2028年。这包括“引领未来”（Leading the Future），这是一个主要支持中期选举安全席位候选人的产业关联超级政治行动委员会。
“我们致力于开展跨越多个选举周期的工作，2028年将见证谁真正关心通过人工智能国家监管框架，以及谁想将这个对国家未来至关重要的问题政治化，”该超级政治行动委员会发言人杰西·亨特（Jesse Hunt）在一份声明中表示。
As the dust settled on Election Night, Democratic operatives working to elect James Talarico were surprised by the breadth of his victory across Texas’ 254 counties. But even then, one area stood out.
Kaufman County, southeast of Dallas, is the site of two massive data center projects that have sparked local backlash. The largest city in the county, Forney, is already working to outlaw new data centers within its city limits.
The solidly red county was one of 55 counties where a pro-Talarico super PAC, Lone Star Rising PAC, targeted voters within 5 miles of a proposed or approved data center project. The PAC sent them a series of mail pieces and digital ads blaming the project on the Republican nominee, Ken Paxton.
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“WARNING,” one of the mailers read, addressing the voters by their first names and adding, “There is an existing or proposed data center near you in Kaufman County. Ken Paxton made it easier to build.”
Talarico carried Kaufman County by 1 percentage point as he notched a striking 12-point victory statewide, helping lead Democrats to statewide victory in Texas for the first time since 1994.
It was one of many examples where backlash to data centers fueled Democrats’ staggering victories in the midterms. From statewide races to local ballot initiatives, voters demonstrated sweeping support for a tougher stance toward data centers, if not outright opposition to their continued development.
About a quarter of voters said AI and data centers were “crucial” to their vote in the midterms, trailing higher priorities such as the cost of living and corruption, according to CNN’s Voter Poll. But when voters were asked about building data centers in their communities, they were overwhelmingly opposed by a roughly 3-to-1 margin.
“It was overwhelming, unequivocal, bipartisan backlash from the bottom up that was showing up in every corner of my district,” said Michigan Rep.-elect Will Lawrence, who flipped a Republican-held House seat after centering his campaign early on opposition to data centers.
GOP candidates had to contend with President Donald Trump’s strongly supportive stance on data centers. By the final weeks of the election, even Trump seemed to concede the AI industry had political problems when he started proposed rebranding AI as “super intelligence.”
Some Republicans are already warning they need a different strategy on the issue for 2028.
The Alliance for a Better Future, a conservative AI policy group, issued a memo the day after the election arguing that it was “impossible to ignore the strong impact Super Intelligence (SI) policy had on this election and how connected it is to economic concerns in particular.” The memo urged Republicans to “recalibrate” and “course correct” ahead of 2028.
One GOP strategist involved in the midterms said any Republicans who want to be competitive in the next presidential race “needs a better playbook.”
“The economy may have been the top issue of this election, but what people are missing is that AI and data centers drove a lot of that angst,” said one GOP strategist involved in the midterms. “AI will likely move to the top of the issue grid in 2028.”
Lawrence stood out for how early – and aggressively – he staked his campaign on data centers. His first TV ad of the primary opened with him standing in the middle of a field, warning that “tech billionaires want to turn this whole field into a massive data center that will jack up your energy bills and ruin our home values.”
There was hardly a national firestorm over data centers when Lawrence attended a Howell Township planning board meeting in October 2025 to protest a proposed data center. It was one of several such meetings he went to throughout his campaign.
But by the end of the midterms, it was hard to find a race where candidates were not arguing over the issue, racing to keep up with public opinion that cut across party lines.
Democratic candidates generally talked tough on data centers, and some, such as Lawrence, even pushed federal moratoriums on them. Republicans at times echoed calls for new restrictions but also touted their economic benefits and arguing they were necessary to stay ahead of China in the AI race.
Dan Diorio, a top official at the Data Center Coalition, a trade group, argued the industry needs to do a better job of showing Americans how data centers could address their concerns about the cost of living. He argued residents of Loudoun County, Virginia, are seeing tax relief due to the data center boom there, although Virginia politics have also been reshaped by concerns about spiking electricity costs due to data center demand.
“People need to see it and feel it,” he said.
Ohio was one of the biggest battleground states for data centers.
The winner of the Senate race, Democrat Sherrod Brown, branded GOP incumbent Jon Husted as “the face of data centers,” citing his support for data center investments as lieutenant governor. The line of attack was so potent that the National Republican Senatorial Committee issued a memo in August warning that data centers were “the anchor hanging around Husted’s neck.”
The NRSC did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Husted sought to neutralize the vulnerability in September by spearheading legislation to combat rising energy costs from data centers. Senate Democrats blocked it.
The battle also played out at the local level. Voters in at least 10 Ohio cities passed charter amendments to ban construction of large data centers, according to the anti-data center group Conserve Ohio. The ballot measure in Granville, which is outside Columbus, received over 80 percent support.
In another red state — South Carolina — Democrat Annie Andrews pulled off a major upset in the Senate after persistently labeling the Republican incumbent, Darline Graham, as “Data Center Darline.” Andrews flipped Colleton County, which voted for Trump by 19 percentage points. It was one of the counties that Andrews visited to speak out against local data center developments.
The issue was a vulnerability for Graham as early as her primary, when she said during a debate that “we have to have data centers.” Her position, which she later moderated, drew attacks from multiple fellow Republicans at the time.
A new super PAC aligned with the data center industry, Building the Future, made a late push for Graham in the general election, spending $2.5 million on her behalf. But that spending fueled further attacks that she was beholden to the industry.
Data centers came up in notable ways in other House races.
Mitchell Berman, the Democrat who defeated Republican Rep. Bryan Steil of Wisconsin, ran an ad that showed him shooting a clay pigeon labeled “Data Center.” And in Arizona’s 1st Congressional District, Democrat Amish Shah prevailed after bluntly saying he did not want any data centers in his district.
Shah’s Republican opponent, Jay Feely, went for a more nuanced position, the kind that some Republicans are now second-guessing after Tuesday’s wipeout.
“We have to win [the AI race], we can’t let China win it,” Feely said in one media appearance, “but at the same time, you have to be able to talk to the person who doesn’t really care about China and this fight we’re in, who cares about their life. And so you have to make the argument about why data centers are necessary.”
Texas and other states look ahead
In Texas, home to the second most data centers in the country, Talarico was not the only statewide winner who ran on cracking down on data centers. Gov.-elect Gina Hinojosa went further than Talarico did and called for a moratorium on data centers until the Legislature could pass “real protections.”
“We need to stop what we are doing with data centers until we have those protections,” Hinojosa told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Thursday. “We can have a strong economy, strong industry and protections for the people of Texas. Those things are not mutually exclusive.”
Hinojosa toppled GOP Gov. Greg Abbott, who spent months trying to get ahead of the issue with executive actions, even drawing a rebuke from Trump for being “against data centers.”
In the Senate, Paxton agreed with Talarico on some data-center restrictions – but also said there were “plenty of open spaces,” away from neighborhoods, where data centers could be built. That comment was front and center in a digital ad from the pro-Talarico group targeted at people who lived near projects.
Talarico himself ran an ad where he walked through a data center construction site, seeking to explain how “data centers bankroll Paxton, they get tax breaks and you get stuck with the bill.”
“It was most effective where it was tied into broader concerns,” said Charlie Blaettler, political director for the Guardrails Alliance, which positioned itself as a counterweight to the AI industry in the midterms. “I think there was a lot of backlash that was centered on localized fights over data center projects, but I think a lot of candidates did a good job of tying it to affordability and corruption.”
Even as some AI industry advocates lick their wounds, they’re already looking ahead to 2028. That includes Leading the Future, the main industry-aligned super PAC that mostly backed midterm candidates in safe seats.
“We are committed to a multi-cycle effort and 2028 will show who actually cares about passing a national regulatory framework on AI and who wants to politicize an issue that’s extremely consequential to the future of our country,” Jesse Hunt, a spokesperson for the super PAC, said in a statement.
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