‘People really effing hate data centers’: How the AI buildout became the midterms’ affordability issue

“People really effing hate data centers,” Abdul El-Sayed said at a campaign event in July, E&E News reported. On Tuesday, he won Michigan’s Senate race, NBC News projected.

El-Sayed was one of many winners Tuesday who made the AI buildout part of their argument about the cost of living. Voters named the cost of living a top issue in AP exit polls. In much of the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic, the clearest way that issue showed up was the monthly electric bill, and candidates in both parties blamed data centers for it.

The link runs through PJM Interconnection, the grid operator serving 13 states from New Jersey to northern Illinois. Capacity prices on PJM’s grid, which pay power plants to guarantee future supply, rose from $28.92 per megawatt-day in 2024-25 to $329.17 for 2026-27. Monitoring Analytics, PJM’s independent market monitor, estimated that data centers were responsible for 63% of the price increase in the 2025-26 auction, or $9.3 billion recovered from customers through higher rates, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. That adds roughly $16 a month to the average residential bill in Ohio and $18 in western Maryland, IEEFA........

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