THE CRUNCH
Data centres have become one of the few issues activating voters across the political spectrum ahead of the 2026 midterms, with local opposition to the massive server facilities and their infrastructure costs spilling into congressional and gubernatorial campaigns, per The Verge. Tech money is flowing in to match: Leading the Future, a super PAC backed by Marc Andreessen and OpenAI President Greg Brockman, has spent $45 million in a year, while Anthropic-backed Public First Action says it has raised $80 million. Both have funded Democratic and Republican-aligned groups.
Candidates of all stripes are distancing themselves from unconstrained buildout, though how far they will go varies. Many Democrats lean towards a pause, but some Republicans also back one, while others prefer messaging about local control rather than bans.
Texas, which has the second-highest number of planned data centre projects after Virginia, illustrates the pattern. In the Texas Senate race, Democrat James Talarico and Republican Ken Paxton emphasise different messages, environmental impact and keeping Chinese technology out respectively, but both want data centres to bear their own energy infrastructure costs and want certain tax exemptions scrapped. In the governor's race, Democrat Gina Hinojosa has accused incumbent Greg Abbott of flip-flopping after his office celebrated a $40 billion Google investment last year, only for Abbott to announce an audit in August 2026 that could slow new facilities connecting to the state grid.
In Florida, the contest is over whether large-scale data centres can be reined in with policy or barred outright: Democratic candidate David Jolly has pledged a one-year ban on hyperscale data centres on his first day in office. Outcomes remain uncertain, with Cook Political Report rating the Texas governor's race as leaning Republican and the open Senate field a toss-up.