In Arizona, where summer temperatures regularly hit triple digits, air conditioning can be a matter of life and death. This year, as the state recorded its hottest summer on record, Diali Avila’s monthly power bill went up to $400, the highest it has ever been.

Avila, the state director for Climate Power, an advocacy group, said the upcoming elections offered voters an opportunity to elect candidates who can ease their utility bills. “People are making the connection: they’re looking at their electricity bills that they get at the end of the month, and then they’re looking at their ballot, and they’re [realizing], this is my moment to take action,” she said.

Avila is among several clean energy and consumer advocates who say soaring bills such as hers – along with broader questions about affordability – could help move votes in November, as Democrats across the country seek to retake control of Congress.

“This midterm election cycle has the potential to become the first election cycle where electricity and utility bills become a top tier national political issue,” said Charles Hua, founder and executive director of PowerLines, a national non-partisan non-profit that aims to modernize utility regulations. “We’re entering a new politics of electricity.”

National average electricity prices have increased about 10%, in the last two years, according to federal figures, and a recent Pew survey found 74% of Americans said they were “very concerned” about gas and energy prices. A new poll from left-leaning Hart Research found that voters in battleground districts ranked utility bills among the three most important issues in the upcoming midterms.

The cost of energy has always been a political issue in America, but historically it has focused on the gas pump, said Hua. However, in recent years energy demands from datacenters, an ageing grid in need of repairs, climate emergencies such as wildfires and hurricanes that further weaken the grid, and the war in Ukraine has pushed up electric bills. (The war in Iran, meanwhile, has raised the price of gas).

Power bills are one part of a broader concern about affordability that has dominated this midterm cycle, said Geoffrey Henderson, who has researched candidate messaging on climate and energy this election.

“Utility bills were already on people’s minds in prior election cycles, but what’s changed is that datacenters are being proposed and advanced at such a fast rate, and there’s been so much community-level opposition to the datacenters that I think it’s elevating the utility bill question,” Henderson said.

In several races, Democrats are tying their opponents to those high utility bills and datacenters.

Ohio

In Ohio, which has the fourth highest number of datacenters of any state, Sherrod Brown, the Democratic candidate for Senate, has run ads calling Jon Husted, his incumbent, Republican opponent, the“face of datacenters”, connecting his support for the industry to rising electricity bills.

Electricity rates have gone up by 34% in Ohio since 2022, according to state figures, and a new poll from Ohio Northern University found 55% of Ohio residents oppose datacenter construction; 79% believe datacenters will drive up water and electricity costs.

Husted served as lieutenant governor in an administration that offered tax breaks to bring datacenters to the state, but in July, introduced a bill he said would help prevent utilities from shifting datacenter costs on to ratepayers; Senate Democrats blocked the bill, calling it “toothless”. In a leaked memo from 18 August, Republican strategists acknowledged: “More than any other thing in this race, datacenters are the anchor hanging around Husted’s neck.”

“This is an issue that has legs in rural Ohio, and I think it’s going to really help [Brown] close the margin in some of those Republican areas,” said Spencer Dirrig, vice-president of government affairs for the Ohio Environmental Council Action Fund Pac, which backs more regulations on datacenters. “That could be the difference in the election.”

In the state’s tight race for governor, both candidates – Democrat Amy Acton and Republican Vivek Ramaswamy – say they would support halting new datacenters until new regulations come into effect. Acton has criticized Ramaswamy for holding investments in the datacenter-related industry, calling it a conflict of interest; Ramaswamy has said he would divest if elected. (Acton herself held stock in companies tied to datacenters, but her campaign says she sold off individual stocks earlier this year to avoid conflicts of interest).

Acton has also said she would appoint commissioners to state utilities who would focus on lowering consumer costs, a move Dirrig says could have a real impact on Ohioans’ wallets. “If you want the clearest possible connection between your vote and your energy bill, it’s who you elect to be governor and who they appoint to be the public utilities chair,” he said. Ramawasmy has not publicly said who he would appoint, and his campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Michigan

In Michigan, the Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed has sought to tie his opponent, Mike Rogers to DTE Energy, the state’s unpopular, large private utility. El-Sayed has gone after Rogers for accepting donations from the company, which has been criticized for rate hikes and frequent outages as it signs contracts with datacenters. DTE did not respond to a request for comment.

A statewide ballot measure would ban regulated utilities such as DTE Energy from contributing to politicians; El-Sayed has said he supports the measure, while Rogers has not taken a public stance. Rogers did not respond to a request for comment.

“[El-Sayed] has done a good job of making himself an anti-DTE candidate,” said Brian Geiringer, executive director of Ann Arbor for Public Power, which is advocating for replacing DTE with a public utility. “He often names DTE explicitly.”

In Ann Arbor, a ballot measure proposes replacing DTE Energy altogether with a public utility; the city’s mayor and city council have opposed the measure. Despite these headwinds, Geiringer said the measure touches on a resonant theme this election season. “Paying your monthly bill and having your power go out in DTE territory all the time certainly is one of the most salient [examples] of corporations taking your money.”

Arizona

In Arizona’s sixth congressional district, which covers suburban Tucson, advocacy groups have run ads against the incumbent Republican Juan Ciscomani, saying his vote for the One Big Beautiful Act would increase residents’ utility bills by more than $200 a year and cut clean energy production. (The $200 figure is based on an estimate from the left-leaning Center for American Progress.)

Democrat JoAnna Mendoza, who is seeking to unseat Ciscomani, supports investments in clean energy and says her “top concern” is that constituents have the ability to pay for energy to cool their homes. In October, the Cook Political Report shifted its outlook on the race from “toss-up” to “leans Democratic”.

Starting in 2024, Ciscomani signed letters asking his party leadership to keep some Biden-era clean energy tax credits, but ultimately he voted for legislation that phased them out. (Ciscomani has defended his vote, pointing to compromises that he said would lessen the blow to wind and solar energies).

Since then, hundreds of workers were laid off at an EV factory in his district, and several clean energy projects have been cancelled in Arizona, which could have helped supply energy in periods of high demand, Avila said. “[Ciscomani’s vote] is really affecting not only electricity prices, but also people’s livelihoods and jobs,” she added.

Avila said she hoped that if Mendoza wins, she would push legislation to support the state’s clean energy industry. But she added that another state election might have more power to lower Arizonans’ utility bills in the near term: two of five seats on Arizona’s public utilities commission are up for grabs. Republicans have held a majority on the board for decades, and currently all five members are Republicans. “Democrats have an opportunity to rally this energy around electricity costs and flip two seats this November,” Avila said.