2026-10-25 / Signal #6
Forced to pick a candidate, Grok chose Republicans 92% of the time and GPT chose Democrats 97%
“Ask Grok who to vote for and it picks the Republican. Ask GPT and it picks the Democrat. They almost never agree.”
The Story
Researchers asked Grok 4.7 and GPT-6.1 Sol (via APIs) to name one candidate in nearly 500 2026 midterm races with no hedging. Grok picked the Republican in 92% of answers; GPT picked the Democrat in 97%. They agreed in under 10% of races. Search-off tests suggest Grok’s lean is mostly retrieval-driven while GPT’s is more baked-in.
Why It Matters
AI changing media, institutions, identity and the idea of a “neutral” assistant. Concrete experiment + the uncomfortable image of two frontier models as partisan oracles.
Evidence
TechCrunch (Convovo / Cornell study, Oct 24). Primary URL: https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/24/forced-to-pick-groks-ai-model-chooses-republicans-openais-picks-democrats/
Sources
Daily scan: 2026-10-25