Travel to the vast, flat and arid plains of the Lone Star State of Texas, and you often find yourself transported back in time. Ranches, cattle auctions, small towns with just a single traffic light and the “nodding donkey” onshore oil fields that date back to the early 1900s are perpetual sights that greet you.

But today, the Texas landscape is threatened with massive change, and with just two months to go before America’s midterm elections, in some parts of the state it is leading traditional Republican supporters to abandon their party and transfer their allegiance to the Democrats instead.

Texas is already home to 137 active data centres using in excess of 7,000 megawatts of electricity as they power the AI revolution. But market intelligence company Cleanview, which tracks data centre developments across the country, reports that there are already 339 additional projects either seeking planning permission or already approved to enter operation in the state.

In American politics today, no issue is sparking more fury among voters than proposals to build data centres in their local neighbourhoods, or in nearby countryside where they like to spend their weekends hunting, shooting and fishing.

Republicans have, until recently, eagerly thrown the state’s doors open to data centres and the companies that operate them. Texas has even portrayed itself as a refuge for tech companies seeking relief from the high tax, red-tape-infused environment in California, and offered massive tax breaks for AI pioneers.

Last November, hailing Google’s announced $40bn investment in the state, Governor Greg Abbott – a fervent Trump supporter – pledged to turn Texas into America’s “epicentre of AI development, where companies can pair innovation with expanding energy”. Google’s parent company Alphabet was making “a Texas-sized investment in the future of our great state”, he gushed.

But less than a year later, the tables have turned. The Lone Star State is now at the epicentre of US efforts to stop data centres in their tracks. The pace of the build-out, the lack of transparency over planning processes, the threat to local environments and the sheer amount of power and water each project will consume is enraging voters who are taking their anger out on Republicans.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is the party’s Trump-backed candidate for a crucial Senate seat this November. His opponent, the young progressive and populist Democrat James Talarico, has spent the summer flaying Paxton, accusing him of voting “to flood Texas with data centres by giving them billions in tax breaks with no regulations”.

As recently as May, Paxton projected the industry as vital to America’s geopolitical battle to retain its position as the world’s largest economic power. “We are competing with China on artificial intelligence and we can’t afford to lose that race”, he said. “We’ve got to find a way…to excel, and to make sure they don’t finish ahead of us,” he insisted.

But now, with a growing number of pollsters and political analysts projecting that Talarico could score a shock upset in November’s election – a win for the Democrats that may even be the decider in securing the party’s control over the Senate – Paxton is backing down.

Last week, with fewer than 70 days left in the midterm campaign, he pledged to back a ban on data centre construction in rural parts of the state. He said he will hold companies criminally liable if their data centres power AI chatbots that endanger children and backed the repeal of what he called “outdated incentives” that have turned Texas into an AI data centre haven.

Abbott, battling to secure a fourth term in office this November, is also engaged in an urgent reverse ferret. The Governor is now pausing data centre approvals, and argues that “gaining the support of people in local communities is essential” if the industry is to take root in the Texas soil. He now claims data centre companies “dug their own grave…and that’s why they got the backlash they deserve”.

Trump is both unimpressed and unbowed. “For Texas to say no to data centres is a mistake, in the sense that it could be bigger than oil”, he told . He called for fresh tax incentives to attract even more construction and said some local communities that he did not identify remain gung-ho about embracing them.

A recent Fox News poll showed significant movement of voters in the Democrats’ favour in both the Texas Senate and gubernatorial races. Broader issues including the economy and the unpopularity of Trump’s brutal programme of mass deportations are fuelling independent voters to move in the Democrats’ direction. But some traditional Republican voters, especially in rural areas, identify the data centre issue as their biggest reason for abandoning Abbott and Paxton.

“My party has failed,” one Texas Republican voter told last week, arguing that on the data centre issue “nothing has been done by our party to help…I’m not going to vote for them”. Republicans now have just two months to try and stave off the loss of support, shore up their base and persuade voters their very belated scepticism about data centres is authentic. With Trump pillorying them from the sidelines for going wobbly, their task looks daunting.