Data Centers Made Noise, But Skyrocketing Gasoline And Diesel Prices Decided The Midterms

Two weeks before Election Day, I wrote here that the 2026 midterm elections would turn out to be the “gasoline prices are too damn high” election, not the data center election. Despite punditry still pointing to data centers today as the big issue, the polls show that far more voters all over the country had the economy on their minds, with prices for gas and diesel atop their list of economic issues when they went to the polls.

It’s always the economy, stupid, as James Carville became famous for saying.

The problem for Republicans — and for President Donald Trump — was the crystal clear cause-and-effect relationship between the Iran Conflict and the prices at the pump. There was simply no denying that the extra $15 to $20 bucks drivers were paying every time they filled up was a direct consequence of the war Mr. Trump kicked off on Feb. 28.

The President’s rhetoric on the subject — constantly stating that higher gas prices were no big deal when compared to preventing the Iranian regime from getting a nuclear bomb — was not helpful, whether one agreed with it or not. It showed the leader of the Republican Party to be completely out of touch with the struggles of working families on the matter.

For Americans living paycheck to paycheck, as most Americans still do, the price of gasoline is more than an economic issue: It’s also an emotional one because they have no choice but to pay the price, no matter how high it goes.

President Trump and his party lost sight of that reality in this election, just as President Barack Obama and the Democrat Party lost sight of the average American’s emotional feelings related to rising medical costs and suffered a similar wipeout in the 2010 midterms.

To be fair, the data center issue did show up big in some key races. In Ohio, Sherrod Brown beat incumbent Sen. John Husted after branding him “the face of data centers,” according to Fortune, which also noted that Husted had been “basically at every single ribbon cutting for data centers across the state.”

In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed held a rally in front of the OpenAI-Oracle campus site in Saline Township and ran on a “no rate hikes” promise. In Iowa, Democrat Rob Sand won the governor’s race promising to make data centers “pay their own way,” as reported by NewsNation.

But then, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, Senate candidate Ken Paxton, and other Texas Republicans running for statewide offices made exactly the same pledge related to data centers. Every one of those Republicans were defeated by big margins. Why? Because the prices for gasoline and diesel overshadowed everything. The AP put it bluntly in its post-election analysis: “Voters could see it clearly in their receipts from grocery stores and gasoline stations.”