American voters are increasingly using AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude to help them make decisions about candidates and ballot measures, marking what may be the first election cycle where AI plays a significant role in voter research. The leftist bias researchers have revealed in practically every major AI tool makes this a concerning trend as the midterm elections draw close.
The New York Times reports that as voters face complex ballots with dozens of races and candidates, many are turning to AI chatbots as a seemingly efficient alternative to traditional research methods. The 2026 midterms appear to be the first American elections where voters are using AI in meaningful numbers to guide their electoral choices.
Mia Taylor, a Los Angeles resident, recently photographed her county election ballot and asked Anthropic’s Claude AI to help her decide who to vote for. After the system initially declined to answer political questions, Taylor refined her request by asking it to find links to progressive voter guides and provide strategic voting options. The chatbot responded with detailed descriptions of each race and recommended she vote for incumbent Karen Bass rather than City Council member Nithya Raman in the mayoral race to block Republican Spencer Pratt from advancing.
The trend extends beyond California. Chris Johnson, a 58-year-old Georgia resident who considers himself libertarian, used ChatGPT to identify which candidates aligned most closely with his political philosophy during the state’s May primary. After asking the system to analyze candidates’ voting histories, it recommended Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state who was running for governor but ultimately lost the race.
“I felt a bit lazy for not doing more,” Johnson said. “It felt easier, but I am not sure that everything was correct.”
The appeal of AI tools lies in their simplicity and conversational nature. Users often find the information more straightforward and understandable than traditional internet searches. Many voters say they appreciate the interactive experience of querying chatbots directly rather than sifting through campaign literature, advertising, and news coverage.
Anthropic has stated that users asking about political topics “should get comprehensive, accurate, and balanced responses — responses that help them reach their own conclusions rather than steer them toward a particular viewpoint.” The company says Claude is trained to “treat different political viewpoints with equal depth, engagement, and analytical rigor.”
The confident and authoritative tone of chatbot responses may mask underlying problems. Because the answers sound definitive, users may not verify the claims or check sources. Yamil Velez, a political science professor at Columbia University, suggests that ideal AI voting tools would rely on curated, verified databases of political information rather than pulling data from across the internet as current tools do.
Velez also warned that current AI tools likely favor candidates who are more active in local press and social media, making their positions easier for chatbots to find. Campaign strategists are already adapting by publishing more material online in formats that chatbots prefer, such as bullet points.
Breitbart News previously reported that published studies demonstrate a clear leftist bias in major AI chatbots. This bias is not just limited to how chatbots answer political questions. For example, OpenAI’s ChatGPT labeled GOP fundraising links as “unsafe” while considering Democrat links fine for users to click on.
Breitbart News social media director Wynton Hall has written his instant bestseller Code Red: The Left, the Right, China, and the Race to Control AI to serve as the definitive guide on how the MAGA movement can create positions on AI that benefit humanity without handing control of our nation to the leftists of Silicon Valley or allowing the Chinese to take over the world. One of the central themes of the book is that AI is not just a tool, it’s political power, which Hall explains its leftist creators are happy to wield:
“Technology is ultimately political because technology is a form of power,” Hall quotes DeepMind and Inflection AI cofounder Mustafa Suleyman, who was named CEO of Microsoft AI in March 2024, as stating. “Technology and political organization cannot be divorced. . . . This has important ramifications for what’s coming.” Hall adds bluntly: “In other words, we’re facing more than a tech revolution. We’re facing a pixelated culture revolution.”
The money trail tells the story. As Hall documents in CODE RED, 85 percent of Apple, Meta, Amazon, and Google’s political donations flow to Democrats. Bill Gates pumped $50 million into Kamala Harris’s campaign. LinkedIn and OpenAI cofounder Reid Hoffman blew nearly $35 million backing Democrats. Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz poured $38.9 million into Democratic coffers. Employees of Alphabet, the parent company of Google and YouTube, donated forty times as much to Kamala Harris as to Donald Trump. These are the same people building the AI systems that hundreds of millions of Americans now rely on for information.
Read more at The New York Times here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of AI, free speech, and online censorship.