Data center developers seeking to build dozens of sprawling artificial intelligence campuses across Texas were already dealing with a suspension of approvals under Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.

Under Gina Hinojosa, elected on Tuesday as the first Democratic governor of the Lone Star State in more than three decades, they’re facing their worst-case scenario.

As part of her campaign, Hinojosa repeatedly called for an immediate moratorium on data center development. She’s described Abbott’s vows to rein in data center operators as “nothing more than an election year stunt” and has accused developers of “raising our utility rates and depleting our water.” She’s vowed to halt approvals until “a legislative session that puts Texans first so that we don’t have any more communities in Texas who are powerless against these global corporations.”

Combining Hinojosa’s victory with those of other Democrats who won gubernatorial races from Georgia to Ohio and Pennsylvania could leave half of proposed AI data center additions across the U.S. vulnerable to stricter local scrutiny and pushback. All of them made more aggressive data center regulation a central part of their campaigns, and their wins underscore the intensity of the growing voter backlash against the sites powering AI systems worldwide.

The results were part of a broader Democratic rout that wrested party control of the U.S. House and Senate away from Republicans, propelled by voters’ frustration with the cost of living and the war in Iran. Democrats are poised to put closer scrutiny on Silicon Valley interests that had largely been spared during President Donald Trump’s first two years in office.

From the largest U.S. firms like Meta Platforms Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. to data center specialists such as CoreWeave Inc., the industry is pouring trillions of dollars into the computing hubs essential to AI. That’s in turn fueling unprecedented demand for the gear that goes into those data centers, from Nvidia Corp. accelerators to memory and cooling systems.

The threat now is that policymakers turn up the heat on those increasingly unpopular projects, slowing the infrastructure buildout and hampering the pace of AI rollouts that major companies are counting on to boost their bottom lines.

Markets had already started to bake in the risk of more regulatory scrutiny and sold off tech shares in the weeks leading up to the election. The results remove uncertainty for investors and present an opportunity to buy back in to the industry. Big tech companies including Meta, Amazon and Alphabet Inc. traded higher on Wednesday when New York exchanges opened.

CoreWeave, down 25% this year, traded more than 5% lower. Tesla Inc. and Space Exploration Technologies Corp., controlled by Trump-allied billionaire Elon Musk, who’d donated nearly $450 million to the Republicans, also fell around 5%. Nvidia, whose Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang has frequently appeared with Trump this year, also declined slightly.

The election results threatened to overshadow bullish earnings results from AI chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and server supplier Super Micro Computer Inc. that had earlier touched off a rally across stocks tied to the buildout of infrastructure powering the technology.

“If there are new regulations in Texas, AI infrastructure will be first to be hurt,” Huh Jae-Hwan, an analyst at Eugene Investment & Securities. That “is getting played out in the stock market.”

In Texas, roughly 13 gigawatts of data center capacity — enough to power roughly 10 million homes at any given moment — is immediately exposed by Hinojosa’s win, Gordon Johnson of GLJ Research said in a note late Tuesday. “Projects with power, permits and steel keep going,” he said, and those with power but no state environmental permits slip 12 to 18 months.

But those “projects with neither probably go to Louisiana, Oklahoma or nowhere,” Johnson said in the note.

Texas accounts for nearly 30% of the U.S. data center capacity set to come online in 2028, representing by far the largest share of any state, research firm SemiAnalysis said ahead of the election. “A few months of lost time in that market can move the national number,” according to SemiAnalysis.

Hinojosa presents a clearly “more bearish approach: she would impose a moratorium until legislation is passed that gives communities a voice, protects household utility bills, and ends the tax incentives for data centers,” the firm said. “The question now is how long the pause lasts.”

Jefferies has assigned “tiers” to U.S. states representing the “political risk” they represent to new data center projects. Tier 1 implies the state is welcoming to new data centers. Tier 5 assumes the opposite. Ahead of the Texas election, Jefferies analysts including Jonathan Petersen said in a note that a “Hinojosa win would result in an immediate statewide pause and move Texas from Tier 3 to Tier 4 under our framework.”

“Regardless of the election outcome, the 2027 session could bring tighter rules around who pays for grid infrastructure, water use and data center tax incentives,” Petersen said. “We view these as more likely to increase development costs and requirements than materially restrict the Texas pipeline.”

In Ohio, another state that’s been flooded with data center proposals particularly around Columbus, Democrat Amy Acton defeated billionaire entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy to become its next governor, flipping a Republican-held office. Acton has called for an immediate conditional moratorium that requires data center developers to meet a series of requirements in order to be cleared for construction. She’s pledged to “fight against the unchecked development of data centers.”

Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms became the first black woman elected governor of Georgia, wresting control of the executive mansion after more than two decades in Republican hands. While Georgia has historically encouraged data center development and ranks as the third-largest state for data center development, local opposition is growing. Bottoms called for a moratorium on new construction of the sites on the campaign trail.

The Georgia election presented “a clearer divide than several other states,” Jefferies said in its note. “A Bottoms win could bring a temporary statewide pause.”

Democratic incumbent Josh Shapiro’s win as governor of Pennsylvania was largely expected to maintain the status quo. Shapiro, who once encouraged and helped attract data center developments in the state, has since shifted his stance, railing against speculative projects and those that locals oppose.

Ahead of the election, PIMCO head of public policy Libby Cantrill warned that the gubernatorial races would have a significant impact on the path forward for data center projects, citing candidates’ calls for construction pauses similar to one enacted in July by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul.

“Even if statewide moratoria do not result, we expect to see a lot more sand in the gears of the AI buildout regardless – with more time required to secure permits and other approvals, as well as more concessions that data center developers will have to make,” Cantrill said.

—With assistance from Mark Anderson and Mark Chediak.

(Updates with share reactions in eighth and ninth paragraphs.)

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