On Tuesday the artificial intelligence boom was on the ballot 41 times in 10 states. By Wednesday, with most results in, voters had sided with it just once.
The questions, many of them in Ohio, spanned moratoriums, attempted rezonings and advisory votes for local officials. Another six preceded them this year; a further three are yet to come. In many cases, the margins were staggering. In Wells, Me., more than 80 percent of voters approved a retroactive 180-day moratorium on data center development.
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The lone win came in Harwood, N.D., where voters, by about three to one, rejected a proposal requiring extra review of industrial projects, data centers included. A $3-billion data center called Polaris Forge 2 is already under construction near the city.
The skepticism climbed the ballot, too. Governors-elect Gina Hinojosa in Texas, Keisha Lance Bottoms in Georgia, and Amy Acton in Ohio—all Democrats—made data center regulation a key part of their campaigns. Texas is the big one, accounting for about a quarter of the U.S. data center capacity in the works, according to one recent analysis, and tighter rules there could slow the national build-out.
In the short term, investors got jittery on Wednesday, sending AI data center stocks tumbling. In the long term, the results lend weight to a prediction from OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer, Chris Lehane, that AI will be the defining issue of the 2028 presidential election.
We analyzed the initiatives, referrals and advisory questions on the ballot this year to understand what they say about where people do—and overwhelmingly don’t—want the U.S. AI build-out to happen. The full list is below.
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