Last week’s election results demonstrated the first concrete proof of the potency of an anti-AI message, as the effects of AI data centers on utility bills played a significant role in several major Democratic victories. In New Jersey, Governor-elect Mikie Sherrill’s closing argument was a pledge to freeze electricity rates, which have soared because of data center demand. In Virginia, Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger won after pledging to make data centers “pay their own way,” and many Democrats went even further. At least one candidate, John McAuliff, flipped a seat in the House of Delegates by focusing almost entirely on tying his Republican opponent to the “unchecked growth” of data centers, with an ad that asked, “Do you want more of these in your backyard?” And in Georgia, Democrats won their first non-federal statewide races in decades, earning 60 percent of the vote against two Republican members of the Public Service Commission by criticizing Big Tech “sweetheart deals” and campaigning for policies “to ensure that the communities that they’re extracting from” don’t end up with their “water supplies … tapped out or their energy … maxed out.”

As these election results suggest, data center opposition is remarkably bipartisan. A large proportion of Big Tech’s AI infrastructure buildout is occurring in red states, like Indiana, Texas, Ohio, and West Virginia, where data centers have added billions of dollars to household energy bills and inspired serious hostility from Democrats and Republicans alike. As one conservative anti-data center activist in Oklahoma said, “We’d probably see our elections flip, too, if people started running on it.” Or as Virginia state Senator Danica Roem put it, “There are a lot of people willing to be single-issue, split-ticket voters based on this.”

You would think that such an intensely cross-cutting issue would be at the center of Democrats’ monthslong debate over their party’s future. But many of the voices that have been most vocal on the need for the Democratic Party to begin competing in Republican-leaning areas have been entirely silent on this topic. None of the recent reports from centrist and abundance advocacy groups like WelcomePAC or Searchlight even mention AI or data centers—which makes more sense when you learn that these organizations are themselves funded by Big Tech billionaires, who have also begun outfitting massive super PACs with hundreds of millions of dollars to influence pro-AI policies in Washington.

Here is a clear and simple way for Democrats to transform their party’s brand to appeal to working Americans who are being crushed by high costs and are angry at a system that feels rigged against them. Because, as electorally compelling as an anti-AI position is today, it will become politically essential in the years ahead—for three important reasons.