76% of Voters Oppose New Data Centers, and Cities Must Now Lead

Seventy-six percent of voters opposed the construction of new data centers in their communities, according to NBC exit polling — a figure that industry experts say forces local governments to rethink how they negotiate with developers.

In dozens of localities across 10 states on Tuesday, voters approved measures to prohibit or place moratoriums on data center development and rejected calls to allow them. In total, 41 local ballot measures targeted data centers nationwide. Fifty-six percent of voters said data centers were a crucial or major factor in their choice of congressional candidates.

The electoral consequences were concrete. Senators-elect Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Abdul El-Sayed, D-Mich., made opposition to data centers a centerpiece of their campaigns. Gubernatorial candidates who pledged moratoriums won in major data center markets including Georgia, Ohio and Texas.

What did voters actually reject?

"The message is very clear," said Subodha Kumar, a business and management professor at Temple University. "The main message here is not that people are rejecting AI. The main message is that people are rejecting the cost that they need to pay for these data centers."

Kumar said cities must make developers pay their fair share for the land, electricity and water costs of building data centers — and must make communities understand that companies, not taxpayers, foot the bill.

"It's going to be on the municipalities to be better prepared," said Andy Roehr, managing director with Baker Tilly's energy and infrastructure practice. He argued the vote gives cities "a little bit more confidence and a little bit more standing" to demand mitigation beyond transmission costs: "We're going to need you to widen and strengthen that bridge that goes from your facility out onto the highway because you're going to be running cement mixers on it for the next five years, and it wasn't built for that."

Will the bans actually stop construction?

Not immediately, said Ben Heininger, senior manager of the energy and resources practice and U.S. data center lead at management consultancy Baringa. The 41 rejected ballot measures are "indicative that there's a lot of bothered people in lots of places," but "city-level bans or moratoriums are a rounding error, really. It's a sentiment that demonstrates the level of revulsion, but I don't think it will change much."

Statewide action is another matter. Statewide bans and moratoriums are "more problematic" for developers, Heininger said, and the results portend more state oversight.

Ishyan Veluppillai, who tracks state and local data center policy for energy companies and investors at investment advisor group Capstone, said the election should push cities from reactive to proactive policymaking, with "more proactive zoning ordinance changes, maybe even temporary pauses and moratoriums."

What happens in 2027?

"With a lot of these newly elected Democratic governors and potential Democratic trifectas created in states like Pennsylvania and Michigan, I think that's going to supercharge the early opening months of 2027 legislative proposals at the state level to regulate data centers," Veluppillai said. He stopped short of predicting preemption of local policy but said state legislatures will be "trying to look out for local governments who just oftentimes are not very well-equipped to deal with these types of questions."

Developers, meanwhile, are recalibrating. "Companies will move slower now because they have to regroup and replan how they will deal with this issue," Kumar said. They are including community approval in cost analyses and "trying to go to the sites where they will see more openness."

"There's increasing importance from a developer perspective to really engage with local officials early, don't spook them during that process and be really transparent," Veluppillai said.

"It's clear that many of the developers have not gone about their business in the best way," Heininger said. Developers will have to earn back trust, but "I would love to see city leaders and councilors actually engaging with the developers because they're mostly trying to do their best."

What should city leaders do now?

City leaders need to give developers guardrails, Heininger said: "If you want to be very strict, that's fine, but you might lose the benefit that comes with a data center if you believe there is one."

Roehr urged cities to "take the ambiguity out of the interaction." If both sides listen, he said, "municipalities will be able to win their way through what could be a real set of landmines for them."

The fiscal stakes cut both ways. Developers will build "in the states and localities that are, frankly, easiest to work with," Roehr said, and slowing development hits "state and local budgets" hardest. "Cities need this money," he said. "And so politicians will have to be very careful that they don't legislate in such a way that they kill the golden goose."