Voter anger over the cost of living is hurtling forward into next year’s midterm elections, when pivotal contests will be decided by communities that are home to fast-rising electric bills or fights over who’s footing the bill to power Big Tech’s energy-hungry data centers.
Electricity costs were a key issue in this week’s elections for governor in New Jersey and Virginia, a data center hotspot, and in Georgia, where Democrats ousted two Republican incumbents for seats on the state’s utility regulatory commission.
Meanwhile, concerns are growing over an AI bubble in stock markets. Mary Callahan Erdoes, CEO of JPMorgan’s asset and wealth management business, said at the Fortune Global Forum just weeks ago that some AI stocks have “a little too much concentration.”
And Lisa Shalett, chief investment officer of Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, told Fortune weeks earlier that she was “very concerned” about the market’s reliance on AI, citing her own calculations that 75% of the gains, 80% of the profits and 90% of the capital expenditure in the S&P 500 was tied to data-center growth in the last several years.
The week of the offseason elections coincided with a tough week on Wall Street prompted by AI concerns. Famous short-seller Michael Burry’s disclosure that he was taking a big position against Palantir resulted in a 10% stock slide over several days, to furious reaction from CEO Alex Karp. OpenAI, meanwhile, rattled markets by appearing to suggest that it would need some kind of federal “backstop,” prompting fears that the still-private, still-unprofitable AI juggernaut is near “too big to fail status.” The Nasdaq 100 finished the week with the worst results since April.
Voters appear to have realized they’re already picking up the tab in surging electricity prices.
Voters in New Jersey, Virginia, California and New York City all cited economic concerns as the top issue, as Democrats and Republicans gird for a debate over affordability in the intensifying midterm battle to control Congress.
Already, President Donald Trump is signaling that he’ll focus on affordability next year as he and Republicans try to maintain their slim congressional majorities, while Democrats are blaming Trump for rising household costs.
Front and center may be electricity bills, which in many places are increasing at a rate faster than U.S. inflation on average — although not everywhere.
“There’s a lot of pressure on politicians to talk about affordability, and electricity prices are right now the most clear example of problems of affordability,” said Dan Cassino, a professor of politics and government and pollster at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey.
Rising electric costs aren’t expected to ease and many Americans could see an increase on their monthly bills in the middle of next year’s campaigns.
Higher electric bills on the horizon
Gas and electric utilities are seeking or already secured rate increases of more that $34 billion in the first three quarters of 2025, consumer advocacy organization PowerLines reported. That was more than double the same period last year.
With some 80 million Americans struggling to pay their utility bills, “it’s a life or death and ‘eat or heat’ type decision that people have to make,” said Charles Hua, PowerLines’ founder.
In Georgia, proposals to build data centers have roiled communities, while a victorious Democrat, Peter Hubbard, accused Republicans on the commission of “rubber-stamping” rate increases by Georgia Power, a subsidiary of power giant Southern Co.
Monthly Georgia Power bills have risen six times over the past two years, now averaging $175 a month for a typical residential customer.
Hubbard’s message seemed to resonate with voters. Rebecca Mekonnen, who lives in the Atlanta suburb of Stone Mountain, said she voted for the Democratic challengers, and wants to see “more affordable pricing. That’s the main thing. It’s running my pocket right now.”
Now, Georgia Power is proposing to spend $15 billion to expand its power generating capacity, primarily to meet demand from data centers, and Hubbard is questioning whether data centers will pay their fair share — or share it with regular ratepayers.
Midterm battlegrounds in hotspots
Midterm elections will see congressional battlegrounds in states where fast-rising electric bills or data center hotspots — or both — are fomenting community uprisings.
That includes California, Georgia, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas.
Analysts attribute rising electric bills to a combination of forces.
That includes expensive projects to modernize the grid and harden poles, wires and substations against extreme weather and wildfires.
Also playing a role is explosive demand from data centers, bitcoin miners and a drive to revive domestic manufacturing, as well as rising natural gas prices, analysts say.
“The cost of utility service is the new ‘cost of eggs’ concern for a lot of consumers,” said Jennifer Bosco of the National Consumer Law Center.
In some places, data centers are driving a big increase in demand, since a typical AI data center uses as much electricity as 100,000 homes, according to the International Energy Agency. Some could require more electricity than cities the size of Pittsburgh, Cleveland or New Orleans.
While many states have sought to attract data centers as an economic boon, legislatures and utility commissions were also flooded with proposals to try to protect regular ratepayers from paying to connect data centers to the grid.
Meanwhile, communities that don’t want to live next to one are pushing back.
It’s on voters’ minds
An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll from October found that electricity bills are a “major” source of stress for 36% of U.S. adults.
Now, as falls turns to winter, some states are warning that funding for low-income heating aid is being delayed because of the federal government shutdown.
Still, the impact is still more uneven than other financial stressors like grocery costs, which just over half of U.S. adults said are a “major” source of stress.
And electric rates vary widely by state or utility.
For instance, federal data shows that for-profit utilities have been raising rates far faster than municipally owned utilities or cooperatives.
In the 13-state mid-Atlantic grid from Illinois to New Jersey, analysts say ratepayers are paying billions of dollars for the cost to power data centers — including data centers not even built yet.
Next June, electric bills across that region will absorb billions more dollars in higher wholesale electricity costs designed to lure new power plants to power data centers.
That’s spurred governors from the region — including Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro, Illinois’ JB Pritzker and Maryland’s Wes Moore, all Democrats who are running for reelection — to pressure the grid operator PJM Interconnection to contain increases.
High-rate states vs. lower-rate rates
Drew Maloney, the CEO of the Edison Electric Institute, a trade association of for-profit electric utilities, suggested that only some states are the drivers of higher average electric bills.
“If you set aside a few sates with higher rates, the rest of the country largely follows inflation on electricity rates,” Maloney said.
Examples of states with faster-rising rates are California, where wildfires are driving grid upgrades, and those in New England, where natural gas is expensive because of strained pipeline capacity.
Still, other states are feeling a pinch.
In Indiana, a growing data center hotspot, the consumer advocacy group, Citizens Action Coalition, reported this year that residential customers of the state’s for-profit electric utilities were absorbing the most severe rate increases in at least two decades.
Republican Gov. Mike Braun decried the hikes, saying “we can’t take it anymore.”
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Associated Press reporter Jeff Amy in Atlanta contributed to this report.
Politics8 years ago