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In Pataskala, Ohio, voters went to the polls on Tuesday and approved a change to their city charter aimed at data centers, by a margin of 73.62% to 26.38%, according to results reported by Fox Business. In Granville, Ohio, the vote was 82.45% to 17.55%. In Wells, Maine, Scientific American reported, more than 80 percent of voters approved a moratorium on new data centers that reaches back in time.
Two days later, Wall Street sent the bill. On Thursday the Nasdaq Composite closed 5.52% lower, its worst day since April 2025, Fox Business reported. NPR put the damage at more than $2 trillion in market value. The S&P 500 fund SPY, by our own closing prices, fell 4.4% that day, a day after it rose 1.7% on relief that the election was settled.
This is the story of how a local fight over electricity bills, water and noise became a national market event in one week, and what it means for the biggest spending boom in corporate America. The short version: voters have found the one part of artificial intelligence they can say no to, and it is the part that needs land, power and permits.
Forty-one votes, one win
“On Tuesday the artificial intelligence boom was on the ballot 41 times in 10 states,” Scientific American wrote. “By Wednesday, with most results in, voters had sided with it just once.” The one win came in Harwood, North Dakota, where voters rejected extra review of industrial projects by about three to one. Fox Business, citing an analysis by Ballotpedia and results compiled by CNBC, counted the same result: restrictions or rejections almost everywhere the question was asked.
The anger climbed the ballot. In Texas, Democrat Gina Hinojosa beat Governor Greg Abbott “after campaigning on a proposed moratorium on new data center projects and tougher protections for the environment and electricity ratepayers,” Fox Business reported. In Ohio, Amy Acton, also a Democrat, won the governor’s race backing a moratorium; in Georgia, Keisha Lance Bottoms made accountability for data-center developers a central part of her campaign. Semafor reported, citing one analysis, that Democrats in more than 130 federal and governor’s races ran anti-tech or anti-data-center ads.
Texas matters most. It accounts for about a quarter of the U.S. data-center capacity in the works, according to an analysis cited by Scientific American, so tighter rules there could slow the national build-out. UBS analysts estimated that construction pauses could put roughly 30 percent of planned U.S. data-center capacity additions in 2028 at risk, Al Jazeera reported, citing Reuters.
The backlash is not only Democratic. A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll before the election found that seven in 10 Americans, including a majority of Republicans, opposed new data centers in their own communities, Fox Business reported. The industry’s answer is jobs and tax revenue. “Affordability, jobs, and the economy are priorities for Americans across the country,” said Dan Diorio of the Data Center Coalition, a trade group. On Thursday OpenAI said it would pay the full cost of powering the data centers it owns and operates, publish construction plans and avoid nondisclosure agreements with public officials, according to Fox Business.
Thursday’s bill
Wednesday was confusing. Data-center operators fell while the biggest cloud companies jumped: Amazon and Microsoft rose 6% each and Alphabet 4.6%, Reuters reported. The logic, as Art Hogan of B. Riley Wealth explained it to Reuters: if fewer new data centers get built, the ones the cloud giants already own are worth more. Power companies tied to Texas data centers slid, with Vistra down 15.4%.
On Thursday the selling caught everything. Nvidia sank about 9.26% and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index more than 12%, Fox Business reported. Data-center operators IREN, Applied Digital and Nebius each fell more than 14%. Tesla dropped about 10.77% and SpaceX 9.05%; Elon Musk had spent heavily against the Democrats who won in Texas, Al Jazeera reported.
“The market's interpretation is that the AI infrastructure buildout will become slower and more expensive, which is rewriting growth expectations across the whole supply chain,” Jakub Rochlitz, a market analyst at eToro, told Fox Business. Not everyone bought the panic. “This feels like the capitulation phase for the data center capex beneficiary stocks, especially the semiconductors,” Jed Ellerbroek of Argent Capital Management told Reuters. “But I think the magnitude of the moves is outsized.”
The ground was already soft. The Goldman Sachs Broad AI basket, a group of AI-linked stocks, fell 15% in October and was down more than 24% from its peak before Wednesday’s session, according to Investing.com.
Source: SEC EDGAR XBRL data
What is at stake shows up in the filings. Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet and Meta spent $408.9 billion between them on property and equipment in their latest fiscal years, according to their annual reports, much of it on data centers. Amazon alone spent $131.8 billion in 2025, up from $83.0 billion the year before.
What the builders said, a day later
The odd thing about the week is that the companies selling into the boom were reporting some of their best numbers yet. Coherent, which makes optical parts for data-center networks, reported revenue up 49.9% from a year earlier in its quarter to September. “As AI datacenters transition from copper to optical connectivity, Coherent’s broad photonics platform and manufacturing scale position us to help customers meet rising needs for bandwidth and energy efficiency,” its chief executive, Jim Anderson, said in the release filed with the SEC. Its shares fell 13.0% on Thursday, the first trading day after the results, by our closing prices. Arista Networks, which reported on Tuesday with revenue up 58.5%, rose 5.0% on Wednesday, before the rout.
Source: SEC 10-Q and 10-K filings (XBRL)
IREN, one of the operators hit hardest on Thursday, reported after the close that day. Its revenue backlog, the contracted business not yet booked, rose 22% in the quarter to $20.3 billion, it said, although it booked a net loss of $263 million in the quarter, according to its 10-Q. “We own the land, the power and the data centers under all of it, which gives us more ways to fund growth and lets us set its pace,” co-chief executive Daniel Roberts said. On Friday its shares rose 20.0%.
Vistra, the Texas power producer that slid on Wednesday, reported on Friday. Its chief executive, Jim Burke, said the company continues to be “well positioned for the growing demand ahead,” and it announced a 20-year agreement to sell power from its gas plant in Odessa, Texas, to New Era Energy and Digital. Its shares rose 10.6% on Friday, while SPY rose 0.3%.
The filings had one more detail. Amphenol, which makes the connectors and cables that link servers, reported that its chief executive, Richard Norwitt, sold $65.9 million of shares on Monday, November 2, the day before the vote, according to his Form 4. Arista co-founder Andreas Bechtolsheim sold $45.9 million under a pre-arranged trading plan. Executives sell for many reasons, from taxes to diversification, and neither filing says why.
Our read: slower, dearer, and better for the biggest
What it means, in our analysis: the vote did not end the AI build-out, and Washington alone probably can’t. Any Democratic bill would still need President Trump’s signature, Investing.com noted, and analysts doubt legislation could meaningfully stall construction, Reuters reported, though a Democratic Congress means more hearings and investigations. The real power sits with towns, counties and statehouses, which control zoning, water and the price of electricity. That is where this week’s votes happened.
So expect the build-out to get slower and more expensive rather than stop. “The AI buildout will become more expensive, not disappear,” Mark Malek, chief investment officer at Siebert Financial, told Reuters. That favors companies that already own land, power and finished buildings, and hurts those that borrowed to build on promises. It also pushes costs back onto the builders: OpenAI’s pledge to pay for its own power is likely to become the price of a permit, not a favor.
For households, the stakes are not abstract. Average Americans own AI stocks “through their retirement investment portfolios — such as 401(k)s or pension funds,” NPR noted. And the cost of electricity, the issue that turned data centers into an election question, is not going away.
What would prove us wrong: Texas, Georgia and Ohio approving big projects quickly next year with few new conditions, or the largest cloud companies raising their spending plans again in their next results. Watch the first permit fights of 2027. For two years the AI boom had to win over investors. Now it has to win over the neighbors.