The tech-heavy Nasdaq is now in a "correction" as Wall Street weighs the impact of the Democrats' wins on the critical AI sector.
Page F135From§Eachthe morning edition — 6 November 2026
Trump blames voters for crashing markets data-center backers warned them about.
As it ran on the front
Voters who wanted to ban data centers were warned, repeatedly, that the move would leave them backward and poor. On October 22, before a single ballot that week was cast, the Nasdaq composite had already fallen 2.6 percent in a single session, the S&P 500 posting its worst day since July — the correction the sector would later flirt with was already filed in the tape.
National polling at the time found majorities in both parties opposed building the centers in their own communities, though the six votes themselves were never broken down by party. On Tuesday, that opposition went statewide: voters passed 44 ballot measures restricting data centers in dozens of jurisdictions, after campaigns put hundreds of millions of dollars into television ads on the question. Many of the candidates who won had pledged to clamp down on the centers once sworn in.…
…(cont) By Thursday, the market the industry built answered back. The Nasdaq composite fell 5.5 percent, its worst day in 19 months, and more than $2 trillion came off its value by the closing bell — the single-day loss landing on the industry whose expansion voters had just voted against, not on the voters themselves. By Friday, the loss had crossed the Atlantic: European shares tumbled as the worry over American data-center curbs rippled across the continent's bourses, the same uncertainty that had already erased Wall Street's rally.
Texas supplied the gallon-for-gallon trade.
The warning said the voters would pay.
“They told you a ban would make you poor, and you banned it anyway — now it's their stock that's down more than two trillion dollars, not your water bill. Hinojosa didn't flip a single switch at a single data center; she won an election. The money that got torched is the money that bet you'd stay scared, and when the bet lost, they called it your fault.”
“This is a healthy correction, that's all — markets go up, markets go down, ask anyone who's looked at a ten-year chart. The president's point stands: elections have consequences, and if you elect people who ran against the industry, you can't be shocked when the industry — did I just say the market exists to punish voters? That's not what I meant. Nobody's blaming anyone; the president simply observed that the voters have themselves to blame. Moving on.”
Earlier in this story
- Data-center backers warned voters they'd end up poor, then their own stocks lost $2 trillion by Thursday. By Ruth · the afternoon edition, 5 November 2026
- Trump warns data-center opponents they'll end up "backwards and poor," Nasdaq ends up backwards and poor instead. By Ruth · the morning edition, 5 November 2026
The receipts
Opposition to data centers was part of midterm races across the U.S., with campaigns featuring them in hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of TV ads and many winners pledging to clamp down on the energy-hungry behemoths
President Trump blamed the Democrats' blue wave election wins for Thursday’s unprecedented stock market sell-off that saw firms lose trillions of dollars in value in a single day.
Nearly $2tn shaved off Nasdaq value as worries of curbs to AI datacenters ripple across bourses The Nasdaq share index had its worst day in 19 months after slumping 5.5% on Thursday amid growing signs that the artificial intelligence industry will face tougher regulation because of the midterm election results. As Wall Street sustained…
Texas Gov.-elect Gina Hinojosa (D) vowed to protect Texans from data center projects after she is sworn into office in January. “Well, we have always been a pro-business state in Texas, but what changes now with me as governor is it has to be a partnership that benefits Texans,” Hinojosa said during an appearance on...
President Donald Trump blamed the current stock market volatility on voters electing Democrats in the 2026 midterm elections. “The Stock Market crashed today because the Dumocrats had a big Tuesday — So sad to see, you only have yourselves to blame!” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Thursday evening.
Voters passed 44 measures to restrict data centers on Election Day amid concerns over their power usage and potential job losses tied to artificial intelligence. CBS News' Megan Cerullo has more.
Artificial intelligence data centers have become one of the defining issues in the 2026 election cycle, with some candidates putting opposition to their unchecked growth at the heart of their campaigns. Polls show that majorities across parties oppose building data centers in their communities, citing concerns about excessive energy and…
European shares tumbled on Friday as global investors grappled with uncertainty over AI stocks, following the Democrats’ sweeping victory in the US midterm elections. The drop is partly due to fears that Democrats could curb the development of AI data centres, which are widely unpopular among US voters. Follow our liveblog for all the…
· Sharp drops for AI stocks overwhelm markets worldwide as oil prices jump from the morgue, 22 Oct 2026
· Gina Hinojosa calls Abbott's Texas data center pause "an attempt to protect his reelection chances" from the morgue, 2 Sep 2026
· Greg Abbott’s Democratic challenger vows moratorium on data centers from the morgue, 15 Oct 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.