The vote puts AI on the ballot
The results of the midterm elections in the United States appear to have accelerated a social, political and financial rethink of artificial intelligence that was already under way, according to an analysis by Heather Stewart published by the Guardian. The author argues that pressure on the cost of living, linked to the Trump administration's war in Iran, was one of the main drivers of the Democratic wave, but that AI was itself also a subject of the vote: in several localities, dozens of measures calling for limits on the expansion of data centers were approved, while elsewhere curbing these energy-hungry facilities became a campaign issue.
A signal for markets and for politics
According to the source, the anti-AI sentiment that emerged from the vote has cracked at least one of the narratives that were fueling the market boom: the one according to which the United States would have had to cover itself with debt-financed data centers, considered necessary and sustainable with rising technological demand. That prospect now appears less feasible. The text also cites Capital Economics economist Joe Maher, according to whom sentiment toward the sector was already fragile and the election results could become the catalyst for a more lasting correction of the AI-linked stock boom.
The source also cites the position of TS Lombard economist Dario Perkins, expressed in a written note as if it followed a future AI crash: the industry would be supported by about $200 billion in current revenues against more than $1 trillion in future commitments from just two companies, Anthropic and OpenAI. According to the Guardian, the International Monetary Fund had already flagged growing evidence that the deployment of AI might not require the massive investments of the major operators and that the economic gains might be lower than expected.
The text also includes references to citizens' discontent over the impact of data centers, such as the account attributed to Texas senator-elect James Talarico about a mother whose son mistook the nighttime light from a nearby facility for daylight, and to Elon Musk's billion-dollar investment to influence the electorate, which the author describes as having become an argument in favor of the Democrats.
What remains to be verified
The material does not document the overall outcome of the elections or indicate which specific measures were approved and with what legal effects. The figures on the revenues and commitments of AI companies and the IMF assessment are reported as third-party statements in the source, not as independently verified data. Nor is it possible to determine from the text whether the decline in technology stocks will continue: the article explicitly leaves this open. The underlying thesis, according to which opposition to data centers could slow the pace of investment in AI's physical infrastructure, is presented as a possibility, not as an established fact.
