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Democrat Josh Shapiro tests political muscle in swing-state Pennsylvania's midterms
Marion County's top two health department officials abruptly leave
The top two administrators in Marion County’s Health and Human Services department left the county at the same time.
Bird-in-Hand Stage\'s 2026 season offers family-friendly musicals, patriotic program
A couple’s anniversary adventure in an RV, confusion over letters an Amish woman writes to U.S. troops, a tribute to America’s big birthday and fighting stress at Christmas are all
U.S. Democrats look to rein in Trump's war powers, this time on Cuba
The U.S. Senate will vote as soon as next week on a Democratic-led effort to prevent Trump from launching an attack on Cuba.
Elmet Group: Some Questions On This Rare And Critical Materials Business
Elmet Group debuted strongly, leveraging its role in securing US critical component supply chains and reducing reliance on foreign imports. See why ELMT stock is a Hold.
Christy Giddens Named McKinney ISD Director of Health Services
McKinney, Texas — McKinney ISD is pleased to announce that McKinney ISD Coordinator of Health Ser...
Kenyon Sadiq's fantasy football outlook after New York Jets take TE in 2026 NFL Draft
Albany mayor signs inclusionary zoning law amendment
Part of this includes creating a fund to support programs for both emergency renter protections.
Texas Railroad Commission candidates campaign on contrasting issues
Incumbent Jim Wright has a tough primary runoff battle against former Tarrant County Republican Party Chair Bo French.
2026 NFL mock draft 9.2: Will Cowboys target WR with their 1st-round picks after George Pickens negotiations stall?
BillingPlatform Honored as Gold Stevie® Award Winner in 2026 American Business Awards®
/PRNewswire/ -- BillingPlatform, the leader in enterprise monetization, today announced it was named the winner of a Gold Stevie® Award in the Subscription...
2026 NFL mock draft 9.2: Do Cowboys target WR with their 1st-round picks after George Pickens negotiations stall?
Ashley Graham Teases Cameo in ‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’ at Entertainment Marketing Summit
Supermodel Ashley Graham is adding actress to her resume with a cameo credit in “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” set to hit theaters on May 1.
How Businesses Can Build Trust as Institutional Confidence Erodes
Business leaders discussed the significance of authenticity, action, and building common ground at the TIME100 Summit in New York City.
2026 NFL mock draft 9.2: Here's how 1st round plays out, from Arvell Reese to Chiefs to Patriots nabbing an edge rusher
House Republican proposes small-business tax cut to pair with GOP federal budget package
Some congressional Republicans are hoping to tack on tax and other spending proposals to an effort to fully fund the Department of Homeland Security.
Genius POS: Best POS for New Businesses
Genius POS is a user-friendly point of sale system that makes it easy to take transactions, along with a range of back office operational tools.
AI revolution hits medicine: SandboxAQ targets health, cyber breakthroughs
SandboxAQ CEO Jack Hidary joins 'Mornings with Maria' to discuss AI breakthroughs in healthcare, cybersecurity, and science, plus Dell’s $750M investment in a new AI medical campus.
ND Sports Scores for the week of April 20
Sports scores for ND high school and college teams for the week of 4/20/2026
Fed chair nominee on 2020 election winner: 'Keep politics out of monetary policy'
Federal Reserve chairman nominee Kevin Warsh said Tuesday when asked who won the 2020 presidential election, "Keep politics out of monetary policy."
Fed chair nominee on 2020 election winner: 'Keep politics out of monetary policy'
Federal Reserve chairman nominee Kevin Warsh said Tuesday when asked who won the 2020 presidential election, "Keep politics out of monetary policy."
Fed chair nominee on 2020 election winner: 'Keep politics out of monetary policy'
Federal Reserve chairman nominee Kevin Warsh said Tuesday when asked who won the 2020 presidential election, "Keep politics out of monetary policy."
Acton's domestic dispute twisted into Ramaswamy campaign fodder
Opinion: Dr. Amy Acton's clash with her husband reflects strain of relentless work.
Kennedy hints at coming breakthrough device announcement
In this edition of STAT Health Tech: Health secretary hints at possible announcement on how breakthrough medical devices are paid for, and more.
'Mini golf entertainment experience' to open in Cedar Park
PopStroke is a national leader in golf entertainment, with over 20 locations owned by Greg Bartoli and backed by Tiger Woods and TaylorMade, according to its website.
Tanner Horner capital murder case delves into mental health, expert testimony
2026 NFL mock draft 9.0: Chiefs trade into top 3 in final edition, while Giants find great Dexter Lawrence transition plan
Birdfy’s new 4K feeder wants to teach you about the birds it identifies
The Birdfy Feeder Metal 2 features a chew-proof design to protect its seed stockpile from squirrels and other animals.
Duke basketball under Jon Scheyer: Insiders reveal transfer portal news, 2026 recruits, roster, best targets
TheDevilsDen, the 247Sports affiliate of the Duke Blue Devils, shares its latest college basketball transfer portal news
Harry Cohen opponent drops challenge after residency question
Florida Politics previously reported that John Scott Butherus II did not live in the district he sought.
2026 NL Central Power Rankings: Week 4
Crew bounces back but faces tough competition in deep NL Central
2026 NFL mock draft 9.0: Final edition has Chiefs and Eagles trading up, Giants making post-Dexter Lawrence splashes and much more
A permit should mean something. CERTAIN Act guards projects from political meddling.
The CERTAIN Act is a bipartisan bill that aims to protect lawfully issued permits from political interference, increase accountability during review, and ensure projects can move forward on time, w…
PG Joel Foxwell to transfer to ASU
Portland transfer point guard Joel Foxwell committed to ASU men's basketball following a First Team All-WCC freshman campaign.
Freshman Stacy caps Portsmouth's comeback win over Londonderry
PORTSMOUTH -- Freshman Cam Stacy is one of 10 players in their first season playing varsity for a Portsmouth High baseball team that on Friday was on the verge of
In Milan, Europe's far right gathers amid shifting era and enduring identity politics
Just days after Viktor Orban's defeat in Hungary, Matteo Salvini, Italy's deputy prime minister, hosted a far-right rally under the banner 'Without Fear: In Europe We Are Masters in Our Own House.'
Gaming Commission Chair Maynard goes 'On the Record' about sports betting, prediction markets
Massachusetts Gaming Commission Chair Jordan Maynard joined WCVB's "On the Record" to discuss sports betting licenses, online casino gaming and the growing debate over prediction markets.
PS5's NTE Blows Up Gacha Norms with 470 Free Pulls and No 50/50
Here's everything you need to know
Opinion: Systemic failures in New Mexico health care oversight extend beyond Mark Erasmus case
A local attorney says one disgraced surgeon is a symptom of deeper corporate and oversight failures in New Mexico health care.
Hollywood, Silicon Valley turn out for the 'Oscars of Science'
Big names from the worlds of film, technology, music and sports gathered on Saturday in Santa Monica, California for the Breakthrough Prizes, popularly known as the "Oscars of Science."
Gathering of Nations’ ‘Last Dance’ could signal big loss for local businesses
Albuquerque’s Gathering of Nations powwow is approaching its final ‘Last Dance’ this weekend, and local businesses are hoping the event goes out with a bang as they brace for the loss of up to $30 million in annual economic activity and hotel occupancy rates roughly 20% higher than average.
New LSU science building aims to keep Louisiana talent in state
148,000-square-foot facility features labs, workspaces and glass-walled teaching areas
AHSAA pathway to championship changes for fall, winter and spring sports
With the AHSAA public and private splits for championship play, the pathway to championships will look different.
How Fiesta Bowl platform adds 'instant credibility' to women’s flag football
The Fiesta Sports Foundation will host a women's college flag football tournament this weekend. CEO Erik Moses hopes it's a movement, not a moment.
Meghan Trainor cancels tour, including Hershey stop
A pop star's planned stop in Hershey — along with the rest of her tour dates — have been canceled.
How Islamophobic rhetoric leaves an impact on the mental health of Muslim Americans
Negative portrayals of Muslims shape public attitudes and lead to increased discrimination, often resulting in hate crimes and psychological harm.
Drug-resistant bacteria causing bloody diarrhea is growing threat
Here's a look at how to prevent drug-resistant shigella, a type of bacteria that causes shigellosis, a diarrheal infection.
Families left reeling after hospitals in blue states drop transgender care for youth
Massachusetts passed laws and joined lawsuits to protect access to gender-affirming care for minors. But faced with the Trump administration's threats, some hospitals voluntarily stopped care.
Lowcountry small business turns tide on drowning risk for children with autism
April marks Autism Acceptance Month, a time focused on inclusion, understanding and highlighting critical safety issues.
Rams trade for star defensive player in new mock draft
If the Rams are truly all-in for 2026, they should consider trading the No. 13 pick for an established star.
Mamdani releases 2025 tax returns, discloses $1,643 from rap royalties
Mamdani and his wife also got a $7,011 tax refund, including $5,704 from the federal government and $1,307 from New York state.
Cuba Tried to Deliver Secret Letter Directly to Trump Via a Cuban Businessman
Analysts saw the missive as an attempt to go around Secretary of State Marco Rubio, though it’s unclear whether the message reached the president
Orbán’s defeat threatens to halt Hungarian support of populist right
Individuals such as Matt Goodwin and Lord Frost benefited from largesse of self-styled ‘illiberal democracy’
States rush to redraw U.S. House districts ahead of the November midterm elections
Redistricting usually happens once a decade, but President Donald Trump sparked a mid-decade redistricting battle last year while calling on Texas Republicans to redraw their districts for partisan advantage. California Democrats reciprocated, and other states soon followed.
Health information delivered as a video game can bridge the communication gap between patients and providers
By letting people make choices and experience the outcomes of those choices, gaming provides a much more hands-on way of learning about health.
Gatorade, inventor of the sports drink, is getting a rebrand targeting non-athletes
Sixty years after it invented sports drinks, Gatorade is making a surprising pivot: It’s no longer focusing primarily on athletes.
The gamble in Trump’s Iran blockade that could decide the war
President Donald Trump’s switch from kinetic to economic warfare with his blockade of Iran’s ships and ports is an attempt to end the conflict without a new US-Israeli onslaught.
Former River City Science Academy Elementary employee arrested, accused of grooming a student
SantaCon organizer is a grinch who stole $1 million, Justice Department alleges
The organizer of SantaCon, an annual bar crawl where attendees dress up as Santa Claus, was arrested and charged with stealing more than $1 million intended for charity.
These Memphis restaurants got perfect health inspection scores in March
Tennessee Health Department inspectors performed hundreds of health inspections in Shelby County in March. These 46 restaurants earned perfect scores.
From a massive living area to an entertainment room and art collection: Ram Kapoor’s approximately Rs 20 crore Mumbai house
Ram Kapoor enjoys a lavish lifestyle in Mumbai with wife Gautami and kids. He once gave a glimpse of his luxurious Mumbai house in a Farah Khan’s vlog. The house is worth around Rs 20 crore and includes an entertainment room, bar and much more. Here’s a look at his lavish Mumbai house:
Savannah Mayor's Small Business Conference registration open. Spots go fast
Savannah's Mayor's Small Business Conference and Small Business Week offer networking, resources, and events for local entrepreneurs.
PS Plus Extra Games for April Leak Ahead of Official Announcement
A trio of titles revealed
They counted on a rural dialysis unit to keep them alive. Then it closed
A hospital in Nebraska shut down the only dialysis unit for miles, upending lives. That's despite a new federal program that gave the state more than $200 million to improve rural health care access.
First day of Oceano Dunes closure, business owner speaks on the impact
A federal court decision is bringing changes to California’s Central Coast, banning off-road vehicle use and camping at the Oceano Dunes for some time.The ruli
What’s the allergy forecast? Cloudy, with a good chance of pollen
Over the next few weeks, New Hampshire residents can expect to see yellowish dust coat sidewalks, cars and the insides of windowsills. Peak tree pollen season begins in April, followed
Beyond the aroma: The science-backed reason your grandmother boiled Rosemary
Discover how boiling rosemary can purify your indoor air, remove pollutants, and promote better health. Learn the science behind this ancient practice and how to easily incorporate it into your daily routine.
Planting the Seed: Growing Tomorrow's Health Care Workforce One Field Trip at a Time
In a converted Save-A-Lot in the Binghampton neighborhood of Memphis, schoolchildren pull on white lab coats and more as they get to work.
Diarrhea-causing infection increasing in US, CDC says
Officials called the increase "a public health threat," especially since shigella is spread easily from person to person.
This comet is ‘regrowing’ its tail in space and scientists compare it to a lizard
Science News: It has long been an exciting area of study for many people to observe comets in the night sky, but according to a recent observation as published in ‘.
Amy Hillyard: $10,000 reward posted for info on missing Oakland business owner
Amy Hillyard, 52, left her home near Oakland's Lake Merritt on March 25. She is considered at-risk due to an undisclosed medical condition.
Swalwell has a ‘reckless disregard for the truth,’ political strategist says
Legal and political strategist Katie Zacharia discusses the allegations against Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., following the suspension of his gubernatorial campaign and resignation from Congress on ‘Fox News @ Night.’
High school sports results for Monday, April 13, 2026
MONDAY’S RESULTS Baseball CITY LEAGUE Obama Academy 14, Carrick 0 (5) WPIAL CLASS 6A Section 1 North Allegheny 6, Central Catholic 1 North Hills...
Why most Indians don’t have naturally pink lips: The science explained
We have been fed this idea of “naturally pink lips” for way too long. It’s one of those beauty standards that gets pushed everywhere but doesn't actua.
Portland Lawmaker Wants to Majorly Turn Up the Dial on Forced Mental Health and Addiction Treatment
“If someone is in the fentanyl fold out on the streets, they are not living their best life,” state Sen. Lisa Reynolds says.
WNBA Draft 2026: UConn star Azzi Fudd selected No. 1 overall by Dallas Wings
Allegheny Health Network and UPMC to have pop-up clinics for NFL draft in Pittsburgh
With the anticipated crowds of people for the NFL draft, health care workers are preparing to care for anyone who will need treatment.
Universe is expanding faster than expected: Scientists struggle to explain cosmic acceleration
Science News: Not only is the Universe expanding, but its expansion is actually happening at a speed higher than was thought possible until recently. For many years.
Open house in Chicago will focus on improving Black maternal health
DoctorGPT: AI’s rising role in Gainesville healthcare
Alachua County Deputy Fire Chief Jeff Taylor said the department uses AI for administrative tasks but remains wary of bringing the technology into patient care.
Turning car battery acid into clean energy: A surprising breakthrough in plastic recycling
Science News: Plastic waste on a global level amounts to hundreds of millions of tonnes annually, although very little of that is recycled. On the other hand, corro.
Why does déjà vu happen, and can science explain it?
Learning with TOI News: You’re walking into a place you’ve never been to before. And yet, for a fleeting moment, it feels known. Not vaguely familiar, but specific, like a me.
Stop wasting time on hair myths: 5 science-backed secrets that can actually grow your hair
If you’ve ever gone down the rabbit hole of “hair growth hacks,” you already know how confusing it gets. Oil this, don’t oil that. Cut your hair, don’t cut your hair. Everyone seems to have an opinion - and half of it contradicts the other half.So let’s simplify things.Here are 5 science-backed habits that actually support better, healthier hair growth. No overnight miracles - just real, practical changes that make a difference over time.
Astronomers detect mega-laser beam signal from 8 billion light-years away
Science News: One of the most remarkable discoveries made by astronomers in recent years is the identification of an extremely strong \"mega-laser\" signal that has t.
“AI polls” are fake polls
A few weeks after Donald Trump’s second presidential win, I took the train up from London (where I was living at the time) to Oxford to attend a conference on polls and forecasts of the 2024 election. Most of the attendees were pollsters or academics, but I also watched presentations from Aaru and Electric Twin, two companies that do what is interchangeably called synthetic sampling, silicon sampling, or synthetic audiences. Stripped of startup jargon, that means they use large language models (LLMs) to simulate responses to public opinion polls by having AI agents take on the role of survey respondents. I had already heard of Aaru thanks to some articles with eye-catching headlines like “No people, no problem: AI chatbots predict elections better than humans” in the months leading up to Election Day. The founders were making some big, some might even say far-fetched claims, such as: “within two years, we will simulate the entire globe — from the way crops are grown in Ukraine to how that impacts production of oil in Iraq, trade through the strait of Malacca, and elections for the mayor of Baltimore.” When Semafor asked Aaru’s cofounders — Cameron Fink and Ned Koh — about my boss, they said “we respect all those who came before us.” Nate (as he so often does) shared his thoughts on Twitter: Fink and Koh were relatively good-natured about this back-and-forth when we spoke at Oxford. They even offered to mail me one of the t-shirts featuring Nate’s quote they apparently had made. I never took them up on the offer, which I now somewhat regret. These synthetic sampling companies fell off my radar for a while, but they do still exist. In fact, Aaru recently received a $1 billion valuation. Is what they’re doing anywhere close to the most important frontier in AI development? Not by a longshot, especially when Anthropic just developed a model so adept at exploiting software vulnerabilities that it’s only being released to 40 companies. Still, silicon sampling is increasingly finding its way into public polling. Axios reported in March that “a majority of people trust their own doctors and nurses” based on findings from Aaru — without mentioning that the “people” in that sentence were actually LLMs. Around the same time, the Public Sentiment Institute “boosted” their online sample of 373 real survey respondents with 114 AI agents.1 (Spoiler alert: even the co-founder of Electric Twin doesn’t think that’s a particularly defensible approach.) Polling companies like Qualtrics and Ipsos are also developing synthetic data panels. So, what should we make of these … “polls”? Let’s get one thing out of the way: whatever they are, they’re not polls in the way that term is usually defined. Subscribe You can’t replace polls with AI On one hand, using LLMs to essentially make up fake survey respondents sort of sounds like the dumbest idea ever, one that will at best imperfectly replicate real polls while introducing all sorts of biases. On the other hand, with LLMs improving at a remarkable, perhaps even alarming rate, maybe that means I’m a dinosaur at the ripe old age of 24 because I still want to rely on polls that talk to actual people. I’m not going to argue that synthetic samples are completely useless. In fact, as I’ll return to later, there is evidence that some techniques can replicate topline survey results quickly and cheaply. But the marketing from certain companies can be slightly optimistic. “No traditional poll will exist by the time the next general election occurs,” said Fink in 2024. We’re just 206 days away from the midterms, and based on the fact that I still have to collect a bunch of polls every day, I’d say he should have run that prediction by a sample of AI agents before the interview.2 To see why synthetic samples can’t replace polls, here’s a quick primer on how they work. The simplest version of these models involves taking a LLM (like ChatGPT or Claude), giving it a demographic profile (e.g., a white, college-educated woman who lives in Utah and makes $70k a year), and then asking it to respond to a survey question. You repeat that process a few thousand times using different demographic profiles and end up with a sample of synthetic survey responses. The actual models used by private companies are more sophisticated than this, usually because they incorporate more hypothesized demographic characteristics for each agent and provide them with extra information. Aaru, for example, feeds agents a diet of news and information they’d be likely to consume, while Electric Twin incorporates their customers’ proprietary data about the audience they’re trying to replicate. The way Ben Warner, the co-founder of Electric Twin, explained it to me was “we have a large amount of data on […] for instance, 5,000 people. Can we make an accurate prediction of how they would respond to another question?” Still, it should be obvious why synthetic samples can’t replace polls. Polling is fundamentally a data collection process. We might use surveys to make predictions by feeding them into election forecasts, but the main purpose of a poll isn’t prediction, it’s gathering new data about what people think and how they feel. Silicon sampling, on the other hand, produces no new data. It’s simply a model: you input LLM training data, demographic prompts, and a bunch of other information, and it spits out a prediction for what a poll would say. We love models here, but models aren’t polls. That difference is an important philosophical sticking point for most pollsters I talk to. “I think politics should stay away from [synthetic sampling], because we’re trying to […] represent the voice of the people,” said Natalie Jackson, a vice president at GQR Insights. Democratic pollster John Hagner told me: “I think I’m just incredibly skeptical of this idea. I don’t think it’s research. At that point, you’re asking the machine to tell you what you already believe.” Hagner has seen some presentations of early synthetic sampling experiments, but so far, “if it’s being used in a campaign, people are keeping it incredibly quiet.”3 But Eli, I hear you saying, aren’t polls themselves increasingly governed by modeling decisions? Indeed they are: pollsters’ choices on which sampling method to use, how to define their likely voter models, and how to weight their samples can and do lead to dramatic differences in the results they publish. Aaru even referenced these limitations in the methodology statement included with that maternal mortality “poll” — although I’m using the term “methodology statement” loosely here, because it doesn’t really explain how the model works at all. We can ignore the (frankly preposterous) implication that synthetic sampling isn’t subject to a separate set of biases. The important point is that there’s still a meaningful difference between using weighting and other statistical techniques on actual polling data and using a model to predict what a poll would say. The latter is far closer to election forecasts or techniques like MRP — potentially useful models, but not a replacement for polls.4 To be fair, other synthetic sampling companies are perfectly happy with the distinction between polls and models. Warner compared polling and synthetic sampling to different tools in a toolbox. “The mistake I think we make is we think that these new tools should either work in exactly the same way or somehow replace these old tools,” he said. “Rather than thinking of it as, okay, so we’ve always had the hammer, we’ve always had the screwdriver, now we’ve got a saw. But don’t use a saw to try [to] do the job of a hammer.” A quick comment from Nate Eli didn’t ask me for a comment — rather rude of him, don’t you think? But since I’m editing this story, I figured I’d add a few quick thoughts rather than putting words in his mouth. Beyond the frequently misleading marketing, what bothers me about the AI “poll” hype is that as AI tools make statistical inference cheaper and/or better (note that these are not synonyms) that actually increases the comparative value of collecting original data. You might be able to train a model to make a reasonable estimate of what some hard-to-reach poll respondent would say — say, a young Black man who voted for Trump. (Such a person checks a number of boxes for a voter who is usually hard to reach in surveys.) Indeed, this is closely related to what models like the Silver Bulletin forecast already do. They essentially smooth out the kinks in noisy survey data by making inferences based on past voting patterns or national polls or surveys of other states. But you don’t actually know what these voters think unless you’re reaching them directly. If there’s a shift in opinion among this subgroup, you’re not going to detect it. So if I were running a campaign, I’d invest more in going the extra mile to find a representative sample of those voters. And then I’d hire some smart quants — or Claude? — to figure out the implications for campaign strategy based on proprietary data that my competitors didn’t have access to. -Nate Silver Are these models any good? If synthetic surveys are just a new type of model, the next obvious question is whether the models are at least accurate. The answer very much depends on who you ask. On one end of the spectrum, you have the maximalist argument that synthetic sampling is more accurate than actual polls. “It’s an incredibly challenging problem to go to someone and say ‘hey, we’re going to be more accurate at predicting human behavior than you, even when you talk to your customers directly’,” Koh recently told CNBC. In his view, synthetic sampling isn’t a saw to polling’s hammer, it’s “magic.” There’s certainly evidence that synthetic samples can replicate certain survey toplines. But if Aaru does have any examples of their approach outperforming the polls, they’re keeping those to themselves.5 Aaru’s 2024 election model, for example, had Kamala Harris leading in Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin on November 4th. And although they’ve since taken down their forecast page, they gave Harris a 50.5 percent chance of winning the race on November 2nd.6 After the election, Fink told Semafor he was happy enough with those results because they were “within margin of error,” a term that is completely meaningless when applied to a “sample” of AI agents. And of course, Aaru says their models have improved since 2024, so supposedly now they’d be more accurate than the polls? Still, their stronger argument is on cost: “We are significantly faster and cheaper than traditional polling, and still more accurate,” said Fink. The first two claims are undeniably true, but the third brings us to the opposite end of the spectrum. Both Jackson and Hagner are skeptical that these models are reliable for anything beyond replicating common survey toplines. “I just […] don’t think the machines are what we want when we’re looking for nuanced views. My example on this is people in Arizona and Nevada in 2024 who voted for Trump and voted for expanding abortion in their states on ballot initiatives,” said Jackson. Hagner identified another issue. Maybe the synthetic respondents, like sycophantic LLMs, are inhuman in one important way: they’re too nice. “The reports that have come through at the meetings that I’ve been at are that the early experiments on this, they cannot get respondents to be as racist or sexist or, frankly, as negative as human respondents,” he said. Academic research mostly agrees on this point. While there are some papers that show promising results when using LLMs to replicate polling data, most show that LLMs suffer from various quirks like producing too few “don’t know” responses and can seriously overpredict the favorability of politicians like Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. They also seem to struggle with too little variation between demographic subgroups, so the difference in predicted opinion between Democrats and Republicans, for example, is too small. When I asked Warner about these studies, his response to these papers was that just because academics can’t get synthetic sampling to work doesn’t mean that the technique doesn’t work in general. “Actually, the argument is, okay, yours does not [work]. That does not mean […] for this complex set of machinery, which uses a lot of investment, a lot of time, a lot of money, you can’t get it to work.” Cards on the table, I’m somewhat sympathetic to this argument because academics aren’t exactly great at making election forecasts. Usually, the people with skin in the game are the most accurate. Warner’s argument is that the approach Electric Twin takes — which includes, for example, making multiple predictions for each synthetic respondent using different models and prompts and subsequently averaging those to get a final prediction in a sort of ensemble forecast — produces better results than the simpler academic models. Warner shared a comparison between his method and the method from a recent academic paper with me, and Electric Twin was indeed able to get more accurate replication. But even still, he acknowledged that synthetic sampling “is not a crystal ball.” “If you asked me, do I think using other data sources will be more accurate than asking somebody who they will vote for, I would probably say no. But if you asked me ‘would your system be useful for our turnout modeling today?’ I would say yes.” For better or worse, it looks like the method is already getting more popular in the market research world. Most of the clients Aaru touts these days are businesses like EY and McDonald’s. And AI will probably begin to pop up in other parts of the political polling process. Pollsters are already using it to code open-ended survey responses, and some firms, like YouGov, are testing using LLMs to ask survey respondents questions. More worryingly, one danger to actual polls is that AI agents can be used to infiltrate online surveys. Most online polls use various checks to prevent that from happening, but there’s conflicting evidence on how effective those filters are and how prevalent AI agents currently are in online panels. If those agents ever become impossible to detect, it might spell the end of online polling, but the solution isn’t to replace all of your respondents with ChatGPT. Silver Bulletin is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a subscriber. Subscribe 1 That particular poll obviously doesn’t meet Silver Bulletin standards for aggregation. But we exclude all Public Sentiment Institute polls from our averages because we classify them as an amateur polling firm. 2 You could argue that Fink meant the next presidential election, but (a) I’m also confident we’ll still have real polls in 2028 and (b) in that case he should have asked an LLM to define “general election.” 3 Quick caveat: that’s reporting from a Democratic pollster. It’s possible that Republicans are more willing to use AI in political campaigns. 4 Indeed, Silver Bulletin does not include “polls” produced by MRP in our forecasts or averages, and we think it’s extremely misleading when their practitioners describe them in a way that suggests original data had been collected among a large number of states or Congressional districts. 5 A recent report from Aaru and EY did show two examples of a synthetic estimate being closer than a survey to a real-world benchmark — but I’d take those findings with a grain of salt because the report reads more like an ad and didn’t involve any sort of prediction being made ahead of time. 6 For comparison, our odds for Harris on the same day were 48.2 percent.
California’s crisis in rural health care is also a chance for transparency
Drug discounts aimed at rural hospitals serving uninsured or low-income patients actually profit hospitals that don’t serve those patients.
Philadelphia could reshape how it disposes trash as Chester residents raise health concerns
Lansing small business empowerment program accepting applications
Time is running out for small businesses to take advantage of a program designed to help them grow.
Crime Stoppers: Extension cords stolen from lot of Moline business
The person was wearing a baseball cap, black hoodie, green pants and boots. Police said the person also had a large black backpack.
US conservatives sue to dismantle Native Hawaiian healthcare scholarships
Do No Harm activist group alleges ‘racial discrimination’ in program designed to support under-served communities
How $2M has helped KC’s Black businesses grow: ‘Represents what is possible’
“We were doing pretty well,” one business owner said. “They just kind of added a little bit more gasoline to the fire.”
Looking for sports to watch for free? Here's a FAST way to do it
FAST stands for free ad-supported streaming television. Granted, FAST channels don’t carry the biggest games, but in a world where watching sports only gets more expensive, I refer you back to the word FREE.
Nevada Health Centers’ Mammovan expands rural mammograms, seeks licensed drivers
For women across Nevada, getting an annual mammogram can be quicker and more convenient thanks to a mobile clinic designed to bring breast cancer screenings dir
Questioning the Science Experts: Is It Even Permitted?
If you’re trying to do ID science, it’s a little bit easier to be intellectually honest, because you have to work harder to make the case for your claim.