Will data centers rock the vote?

It's Election Day in the United States, and data centers have become a core issue in some of the country's most important midterm races. The Verge's Adi Robertson explains why people are uniting against data centers, why they've become a proxy for all kinds of other fights, and how this year's results might change the AI industry going forward. Further reading: Apple is all in on AI — its own and everyone else’s | The Verge OpenAI is quietly renaming data centers ‘compute campuses’ | The Verge GTA VI’s download will need up to 212GB of hard drive space | The Verge Midterm elections 2026: all the news The Verge's investigative series: The Center Will Not Hold The 2026 iPad Mini is a terrific tiny tablet — for a big price Subscribe to The Verge for unlimited access to theverge.com, subscriber-exclusive newsletters, and our ad-free podcast feed. We love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to [email protected] or call us at 866-VERGE11. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices