Data centers were some of the biggest losers in last night's US midterm elections

On Tuesday, tens of millions of Americans voted in midterm elections to deliver a sweep of generational Democratic victories in federal and state races, reflecting a leftward electoral shift that's being interpreted as a nationwide rejection of Trumpism.

But even as Republican candidates and incumbents suffered defeats in what had traditionally been considered some of the party's most entrenched strongholds, the midterms also issued a stinging rebuke to another major source of voter frustration: Data centers. At nearly every opportunity, Americans voted in favor of local ballot measures to halt, slow, or stymie the pace of data center construction in their communities.

As tracked by Data Centers on the Ballot, across the 47 local midterm elections in the American cities and townships that featured ballot measures on data center construction, voters favored restrictions on the rate of data center expansion in 38 of the 39 completed counts. …