Voters approved dozens of ballot measures to restrict datacenter construction

The Guardian said voters backed dozens of ballot measures in the 2026 US midterms that seek to limit datacenter construction.

According to the Guardian, efforts to rein in unchecked datacenter expansion became a rallying cry in some midterm contests. James Talarico, the Texas senator-elect, said a mother said nearby datacenter lights were so bright her son believed it was daytime at night. The outlet said Elon Musk’s spending in Texas to buy the electorate became a Democratic selling point.

The Guardian said opposition to datacenters may slow spending on the physical infrastructure behind AI. Last week, Joe Maher of Capital Economics said the midterms could trigger an extended unwind of the AI equity boom. The outlet said anti-AI sentiment in the 2026 midterm results appears to have burst at least one narrative underpinning the AI market boom.

Dario Perkins of TS Lombard put late-2026 AI industry revenues at $200bn and commitments from Anthropic and Open AI at more than $1tn. Perkins wrote that regular people outside the tech ecosystem lacked interest in AI. Last month, the International Monetary Fund said evidence suggests AI rollout may not need hyperscaler-scale investment (spending by the giant cloud providers that build huge datacenters). The Fund also said potential AI economic gains may be smaller than expected, citing lower-cost Chinese AI models and circular financing in the AI sector.

Publication came a month after the tech-heavy Nasdaq reached its peak, according to The Guardian. The outlet said AI will deliver productivity gains that fall short of justifying current market valuations.

According to the Guardian, voters have watched big tech leaders grow rich even as average consumers face inflation, and the US electorate appears to have decided it has had enough of big tech influence. Cory Doctorow, a tech writer, calls the forced insertion of AI into every app, platform and device enshittification, a term for online platforms degrading as they prioritize profit over users.

Some companies have limited employee use of pricey tools such as Anthropic’s Claude, opting instead for cheaper models on their own servers. The Guardian said the datacenter backlash has refocused attention on concerns about AI that existed before. Opponents have demanded that the AI lobby demonstrate the technology’s value to societies reluctant to bear its costs.

The Guardian said datacenter objections may point to a broader shift resembling Teddy Roosevelt’s early-20th-century breakup of oil and railway monopolies. The report said businesses in a democracy must operate within society’s bounds and that tech leaders have failed to win over the public.