Democratic Party wins big in midterm elections; US AI data center boom expected to face dramatic changes.

Data center developers seeking to build dozens of large artificial intelligence campuses in Texas had already faced a freeze on approvals from Republican Governor Greg Abbott, and their situation became even less favorable after Gina Hinojosa was elected the state's first Democratic governor in more than 30 years. During her campaign, Hinojosa repeatedly called for an immediate moratorium on data center development. She called Abbott's promise to rein in data center operators "nothing more than election-year theater" and accused developers of "driving up our utility bills and draining our water resources." She also pledged to pause approvals until the state legislature convenes and "puts Texans first, so that no Texas community is left powerless against these global corporations." Some U.S. data center operators and cloud computing service providers fell in premarket trading, with Texas-exposed data center developer Cipher Mining down 14% and Cleanspark down 8.6%. Bank of America strategists had previously described the election as a referendum on "affordability and AI data centers." In addition to Hinojosa, Democrats also won gubernatorial elections in Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and elsewhere. This could subject roughly half of all proposed new AI data center projects nationwide to stricter local review and resistance. These Democratic candidates all made strengthening data center regulation a core campaign issue, and their victories highlight growing voter backlash against data center projects that provide computing power for global AI systems.