THE GRID
The Ballot Box Just Became a Grid Constraint
"Do I think that the data center vote cost me the election? Yes I do."
That's Lee Perry. He was a county commissioner in Box Elder County, Utah. Was.
He lost his Republican primary this week. His crime? He voted to advance a data center project.
Not just any project. The Stratos campus, backed by Kevin O'Leary, would need up to 9 gigawatts of power. That's more than the entire state of Utah uses today.
Perry wasn't alone. Other officials who backed the Stratos vote lost too.
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Utah isn't an outlier. It's a pattern.
In Festus, Missouri, voters in April removed half the city council. Their sin? Backing a $6 billion data center.
In Warrenton, Virginia, five new council members won on anti-data-center pledges. Every member who'd approved the Amazon project was voted out.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll from June found 57% of Americans would oppose a data center in their town. Just 14% would be fine living near one.
Gallup found roughly seven in ten oppose local builds.
"Since the pandemic, affordability has become a key issue in U.S. politics, and energy prices are the current face of affordability."
I've been writing about data center demand as a tailwind for energy stocks. It still is. But this is the other side of the trade.
When voters throw out leaders over power projects, permitting isn't a zoning question. It's a survival question. And leaders learn fast.
In Florida, a Republican is running for governor on banning data centers in all 67 counties. In Michigan, Democratic Senate hopefuls are fighting over who's tougher on data center tax breaks.
This isn't left or right. It's local.
57% of Americans oppose a data center in their town. That's not NIMBYism. That's a supply constraint imposed by democracy itself — and it's bullish for anyone who already owns generation assets near existing load.
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RESISTANCE
Texas Tells Data Centers: Pay Your Own Way
Greg Abbott spent years selling Texas as the place to build AI. Now he's putting up walls.
This month, the governor told the PUC and ERCOT to block data center costs from landing on home power bills. He also wants to kill "outdated" tax breaks that lured data centers to Texas in the first place.
Why the shift? The same math playing out in Utah, Missouri, and Virginia. Voters care about their power bills. They're starting to link new data centers to higher rates.
Texas isn't alone. Data center moratoriums have been considered in at least 12 states.
But the Texas move is different in kind. This isn't a local board pausing permits. It's a governor telling the grid operator to change who pays.
The signal is clear. States that once competed to attract data centers are now competing to protect voters from their costs.
If you're modeling data center growth timelines, you need a new line item: political risk. It's no longer optional.
BLACKOUT WATCH
Two Gaps the Market Isn't Watching
Data centers are late — and the grid still can't relax. NERC's summer report says several regions cut their load forecasts. Data centers came online slower than planned. Sounds like good news. It's not. Peak demand still grew 11 GW since last summer. That beat last year's gain. The load keeps rising. The data center slice is just on a different clock. When those delayed builds do flip on, the ramp will be steep and fast.
New England and the Pacific Northwest face blackout risk this summer. NERC flagged both. New England is losing firm power imports as demand climbs. The Pacific Northwest gets 55% of its power from hydro — and El Niño is drying out the rivers. The grid added 58 GW of new supply since last summer. A record. But most of it is solar and battery storage. That doesn't help when the sun sets and the wind dies on a hot night.
The demand number to watch: 132 GW. Gartner says global data center power demand will hit 132 GW this year. That's up 27% from 104 GW in 2025. By 2030, they see 290 GW. Every gigawatt blocked in Utah or paused in Texas has to land somewhere else. Or the 290 GW target breaks.
The political backlash isn't slowing demand. It's concentrating it — into fewer regions, fewer grids, fewer chokepoints. And that's the risk no one is pricing.
